THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 
PROFESSOR  CLARENCE  S.  JCIRSH 


M\\  - 


THE    PERSON    AND    PLACE    OF 
JESUS    CHRIST 


THE  PERSON  AND  PLACE 
OF  JESUS  CHRIST 

Wljt  Congregational  Pinion  lUcture 
for  1909 


BY 

P.  T.  FORSYTH,  M.A.,  D.D. 

PRINCIPAL  OF   HACKNEY   COLLEGE 
HAMPSTEAD 


'■*■  Morality  is  the  nature  of  things.^' — Butler 


CINCINNATI  :   JENNINGS   &    GRAHAM 
NEW    YORK  :    RATON    &    MAINS 


ADVERTISEMENT 

By  the  Committee  of  the  Congregational  Union 
OF  England  and  Wales. 

The  Congregational  Union  Lecture  has 
been  established  with  a  view  to  the  promotion  of 
Biblical  Science,  and  Theological  and  Ecclesiastical 
Literature. 

It  is  intended  that  each  Lecture  shall  consist  of 
a  course  of  Prelections  delivered  at  the  Memorial 
Hall,  but  when  the  convenience  of  the  Lecturer  shall 
so  require,  the  oral  delivery  will  be  dispensed  with. 

The  Committee  promise  to  continue  it  only  so 
long  as  it  seems  to  be  efficiently  serving  the  end  for 
which  it  was  established,  or  as  they  have  the  necessary 
funds  at  their  disposal. 

For  the  opinions  advanced  in  any  of  the  Lectures, 
the  Lecturer  alone  will  be  responsible. 

Congregational  Memorial  Hall, 

Farringdon  Street,  London, 


775405 


PREFACE 


I  WILL  beg  leave  to  plead  that  these  pages  are 
lectures  and  not  a  treatise.  The  handling  rests  on  a 
system,  but  it  is  less  systematic  than  suggestive  in 
form.  Some  repetition  also  may  perhaps  be  tolerated 
on  this  ground.  The  same  may,  I  hope,  be  borne  in 
mind  in  regard  to  the  style.  Most  of  the  discourses  were 
in  part  delivered  to  an  audience,  which  may  account 
for  features  that  would  be  less  in  place  if  only  meant  for 
the  eye.  The  spoken  style  admits  for  instance  of 
inflections  and  emphases  which  made  sufficiently  clear  a 
sentence  that  may  have  to  be  read  twice.  It  admits  also 
of  more  ease  and  intimacy  at  times,  of  personal  references 
and  spiritual  applications  foreign  to  the  remoter  and  more 
ambitious  idea  of  a  treatise.  Moreover  the  position  I 
take  up  makes  the  personal  religion  of  the  matter  the 
base  of  the  theology. 

I  cannot  hope  to  have  made  every  suggestion  on 
such  a  theme  as  obvious  as  it  should  be  in  a  press 
article.  It  is  a  subject  in  which  the  writer  must  rely 
much  on  the  co-operative  effort  of  the  reader,  and 
must  chiefly  court  the  student.      The  merchan  of 

these  goodly  pearls  must  be  seekers  ;  and  without 
even  divers  they  cannot  be  had. 

vU 


viii  Preface 

If  it  came  to  expressing  obligations  the  foot  of  each 
page  would  bristle  with  notes  and  references.  But 
that  also  is  foreign  to  the  lecture  form,  and  especially 
to  the  form  of  lectures  which  made  a  certain  effort  to 
be  as  popular  as  the  subject  and  its  depth  allowed. 
Besides,  an  apparatus  of  the  kind  would  have  given  to 
the  book  an  aspect  of  erudition  which  its  author  does 
not  possess.  It  is  not  meant  for  scholars,  but  largely 
for  ministers  of  the  Word  which  it  seeks  in  its  own  way 
to  serve.  It  does  not  extend  the  frontiers  of  scientific 
knowledge  or  thought  in  its  subject.  One  or  two 
references  I  have  given.  But  had  they  been  multiplied 
there  are  some  names  that  would  have  incessantly 
recurred.  And  especially  those  of  Rothe,  Kahler,  Seeberg 
and  Griitzmacher — without  whom  these  pages  would  have 
been  lean  indeed.  In  certain  moods,  as  one  traces  back 
the  origin  of  some  lines  of  thought  or  even  phrases  of 
speech,  the  words  come  to  mind,  "  What  have  I  that  I 
have  not  received  ?  " 

Those  who  read  to  the  end  will  find  that  the  writer 
agrees  with  the  opinion  that  the  British  attitude  to 
criticism  must  be  above  all  critical.  The  service 
rendered  to  Christianity  by  the  great  critical  movement 
is  almost  beyond  words.  And  there  is  a.  vast  amount 
of  foreign  work  which  duly  and  practically  recognises 
the  fact,  without  surrendering  the  note  of  a  positive 
Gospel.  But  it  is  a  misfortune  to  us,  which  is  also 
almost  beyond  reckoning,  that  most  of  the  translated 
works  are  those  of  a  more  or  less  destructive  school. 
For  extremes  are  always  easier  to  grasp  and  to  sell.  It 
should  also  be  added  in  fairness  that  many  scholars  of 
the  negative  side  possess  the  art  of  putting  things ;  in 
high  contrast  with  the  style  of  their  deeper  opponents,  so 


Preface  ix 

amorphous  often  both  in  matter  and  mode.  The  mis- 
fortune to  the  partially  educated  in  this  subject,  who  only 
read  English,  is  great ;  especially  as  the  popular  impression 
is  produced  (and  sometimes  pursued)  that  all  the  ability 
and  knowledge  are  on  one  side.  Certain  nimble  popular 
journals  live  on  the  delusion ;  and  they  have  not  so  much 
as  heard  whether  there  be  alongside  of  brilliants  like 
Wernle  or  Schmiedel  giants  like  Kahler  or  Zahn.  It 
would  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  latter  two  are 
among  the  most  powerful  minds  of  the  world  in  the 
region — one  of  theology,  and  one  of  scholarship.  Yet  in 
this  country,  and  certainly  to  our  preachers,  they  are 
almost  unknown. 

It  may  be  useful  to  add  that  the  lectures  were  under- 
taken ten  years  ago,  that  the  lines  of  treatment  were 
being  then  laid  down  in  the  writer's  mind,  and  that  in 
the  choice  of  his  subject  he  took  counsel  with  none,  met 
no  request,  and  even  had  to  put  aside  suggestions  of 
subjects  which  it  would  have  been  valuable  to  follow. 
The  Congregational  Union,  under  whose  auspices  the 
lecture  stands,  simply  asked  the  present  writer  to  be  the 
next  to  deliver  it.  The  Union  neither  prescribed  nor 
suggested  subject  or  point  of  view.  And  responsibility 
belongs  entirely  to  the  author  to  whom  was  given  so  free 
a  hand. 


B 


SCHEME 


PAGE 

A.  REVEILLE    AND    PASSWORD. 

Lecture  i.     Lay  Religion  and  Apostolic.         ...         i 

B.  RECONNAISSANCE. 

Lecture  2.     The    Religion    of    Jesus    and    the 

Gospel  of  Christ.     ...  ...         ...         ...       33 

Lecture  3.     The    Greatness   of   Christ   and   the 

Interpretations  thereof.       ...         ...         ...       61 

C.  THE    ADVANCE. 

I.     First  parallel. 

Lecture  4.  The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self- 
Consciousness — Was  He  a  Part  of  His 
Own  Gospel?  ...         ...         ...         ...       99 

Lecture  5.     The    Testimony   of    Apostolic    In- 
spiration— in  General.        ...         ...         ...     135 

si 


xii  Scheme 

PAGE 

Lecture  6.     The    Testimony    of    Apostolic    In- 
spiration— in  Particular.    ...         ...         ...     157 

Lecture   7.     The    Testimony   of   Experience   in 

the  Soul  and  in  the  Church.       ...         ...     185 

n.     Second  parallel. 

Lecture  8.     The    Moralising   of    Dogma,   illus- 
trated by  the  Omnipotence  of  God.      ...     211 

Lecture  g.     The  same   illustrated  by   the    Ab- 
soluteness of  Christ.  ...         ...         ...     237 

D.     THE   ADVANCE    IN    FORCE. 

Lecture  10.     The  Pre-existence  of  Christ.      ...     259 

Lecture  11.     The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of 

Christ.  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...     291 

Lecture  12.     The  Plerosis  or  the  Self-Fulfilment 

of  Christ.      ...         ...         ...         ...         ...     321 


SYNOPSIS 


SYNOPSIS 


LECTURE   I 

LAY    RELIGION 

Christianity  is  a  theological  religion  or  nothing.  It  centres  in 
the  person  of  Christ  rather  than  in  the  Christian  principle,  and  is 
the  religion  of  His  atoning  Incarnation.  How  does  this  affect  the 
fact  that  it  is  a  lay  religion  ?  Our  erroneous  conception  of  lay 
religion — which  is  not  opposed  to  a  religion  truly  priestly,  but  to 
a  theology  mainly  expert.  Lay  religion  means  the  experimental 
religion  of  the  conscience.  What  is  meant  by  theological  reaction. 
Theocentric  Christianity  and  anthropocentric.  Here  lies  the  great 
religious  issue  of  the  hour — a  God  that  serves  Humanity  or  a 
Humanity  that  serves  God? 

LECTURE    II 

THE    RELIGION    OF    JESUS   AND    THE    GOSPEL   OF   CHRIST 

What  is  meant  by  the  'religion  of  Jesus'  which  is  offered  as 
simple  lay  Christianity — the  difficulties  in  the  seemingly  simple 
phrase — the  great  reserves  of  Jesus.  The  effect  on  a  'religion  of 
Jesus'  of  the  new  religious-historical  school  is  that  there  never 
was  in  actual  history  any  such  thing  as  is  meant  by  the  phrase. 
Christ  was  not  the  first  Christian.  The  real  conflict  is  not  between 
an  infallible  Bible  and  a  fallible,  but  between  a  New  Testament 
Christianity  and  one  which  believes  it  knows  better.  It  is  not 
between  inspiration  and  criticism,  but  between  incarnation  and 
evolution.  It  is  not  between  no  revelation  in  Christ  and  n  revelation, 
but  between  a  revelation  and  the  revelation  in  Him.  The  great 
issue  is  the  superhistoric  finality  of  Christ.  That  is  the  true  value 
of  His  Godhead.     And  finality  is  a  matter  neither  of  thought   nor 


u 


XV  i  Synopsis 

power  but  of  life,  eternal  life  in  Christ  for  every  age  alike.  Here 
the  most  recent  philosophy  and  evangelical  Christianity  meet. 
Christianity  is  not  believing  with  Christ,  but  in  Christ.  Christ 
does  not  impress  us  with  a  new  sense  of  God,  but  God  in  Christ 
creates  us  anew. 

LECTURE  III 

THE    GREATNESS    OF    CHRIST    AND   THE    INTERPRETATIONS    THEREOF 

The  recent  growth  in  our  sense  of  Christ's  greatness  developed  by 
critical  and  historical  study.  Does  it  still  reach  Godhead  ?  Is 
Godhead  necessary  to  explain  the  personality  achieved  in  Jesus 
Christ  ?  The  real  site  of  Christ's  greatness  is  not  in  His  character 
but  in  His  action,  i.e.  in  His  cross.  It  is  the  cross  that  ethicises, 
universalises,  and  therefore  laicises,  Christianity.  The  historic 
attempts  to  explain  Christ  are  mainly  three — Socinian,  Arian,  and 
Athanasian — God's  prophet.  His  plenipotentiary,  and  His  very 
presence  as  Redeemer.  The  necessity  for  some  form  of  the 
Athanasian  answer,  with  the  finality  which  it  alone  assigns  to 
Christ. 


/ 


LECTURE   IV 

THE   TESTIMONY   OF   CHRIST's   SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS — 
WAS    HE    A    PART    OF    HIS    OWN    GOSPEL? 


The  Christ  of  the  New  Testament  as  a  whole  certainly  was.  The 
issue  of  the  hour  is  a  choice  between  the  New  Testament  Christ 
and  the  academic — between  the  Christ  of  the  Apostles  and  of  the 
critics.  The  "scrapping"  of  the  New  Testament.  The  Christ  of 
the  Synoptics  with  His  claims  requires  a  Christology — the  Christ  of 
the  extreme  critics  calls  only  for  a  psychology — with  a  type  of 
religion  subjective  and  ineffectual.  The  extraneous  bias  in  much 
criticism.  Christ's  great  confession  of  Himself  in  Matthew  xi.  27 
and  its  exposition.  Only  by  his  Godhead  does  he  offer  himself  to 
the  whole  lay  and  laden  world.  The  critical  argument  and  its 
fallacy.  What  is  our  authority  for  confining  ourselves  to  the  words 
of  Jesus  for  His  Christianity  ?  Or  even  to  the  Synoptical  record  ? 
Do  we  have  there  the  whole  Christ?  We  certainly  have  not  the 
whole  Christ  of  the  first  Church,  of  His  Apostles.  What  is  the 
ground  for  going  behind  them  ?  Have  we  the  means  ?  Can  the 
Christ  of  the  New  Testament  be  got  out  of  the  Synoptics  ?  Or  is 
the  Synoptic  Christ  quite  incompatible  with  the  apostolic  ?  In 
selecting  critically  from  the  Gospels,  what  is  to  be  the  standard  ? 
Christ  the  Character  or  Christ  the  Redeemer?  The  development 
of  Christ  in  the  gospels— was  it  ethical  or  evangelical  ?  Herrmann's 
severe  verdict  on  theological  liberalism. 


Synopsis  xvii 

LECTURE  V 

THE   TESTIMONY   OF   APOSTOLIC    INSPIRATION — IN    QBNERAL 

Was  apostolic  inspiration  simply  a  high  form  of  the  common 
faith  ?  Was  it  the  mark  of  gifted  laymen  ?  Was  it  the  truest  of 
tentative  explanations  of  Christ,  or  had  it  an  element  of  special 
knowledge  ?  Was  it  the  continuation  of  Christ's  testimony  to  him- 
self? Its  place  in  the  evolution  of  belief,  and  its  relation  to 
Christ's  finality.  Distinction  between  the  material  and  the  formal 
element  in  revelation.  Inspiration  the  necessary  and  integral  close 
of  revelation.  The  New  Testament  represents  not  the  first  stage 
of  a  new  evolution,  but  the  last  phase  of  the  revelationary  fact. 
Illustration  from  the  acts  of  a  legislature. 

LECTURE  VI 

THE    TESTIMONY    OF    APOSTOLIC    INSPIRATION — IN    PARTICULAR 

"The  fact  without  the  word  is  dumb;  the  word  without  the 
fact  is  empty."  The  Apostles'  own  view  of  their  inspiration  as 
condensed  in  i  Cor.  ii.  and  i  Peter  i.  ii,  12.  Their  inspiration 
was  the  unique  and  final  interpretation  of  the  unique  and  final 
revelation — the  thought  about  himself  of  a  Christ  living  in  them. 
Could  the  synoptic  Christ  have  produced  historic  Christianity  ? 
Genius  and  inspiration.  The  Bible  is  the  real  successor  of  the 
Apostolate.  The  authority  of  the  Bible  and  the  authority  in  the 
Bible.      A  parable. 

LECTURE   VII 

THE    TESTIMONY    OF    EXPERIENCE    IN    THE    SOUL    AND    IN  THE    CHURCH 

The  two  streams  in  current  Protestanism,  Revelation  and 
Illumination.  The  place  of  experience  in  Christianity.  As  nature 
is  to  science  so  is  Christ  to  faith.  The  difference  between  our 
experience  of  a  Saviour,  and  our  experience  of  a  Saint.  Faith  and 
impression.  What  we  experience  in  Christ  is  a  Saviour  for  the 
lay  soul  and  not  merely  a  presence  for  the  mystic  adept.  That  is, 
we  have  one  whose  action  is  deeper  than  the  certainty  of  our  self- 
consciousnesa.  There  is  no  rational  certainty  which  has  a  right 
to  challenge  moral — and  especially  the  moral  certainty  of  being 
saved.  The  enlargement  of  personal  evangelical  experience  to  the 
historic  scale  of  the  Church.  The  first  Church  could  never  have 
included  Christ  in  his  own  Gospel  unless  he  had  himself  done  so. 
We  must  take  the  whole  New  Testament's  Christianity,  as  prolonged 
in  the  experience  of  an  Apostolic  Church.  Otherwise  we  must 
think  it  was  a  poor  Christ  who  could  not  protect  his  followers 
from   idolatry  of  him. 


xviii  Synopsis 

LECTURE  VIII 

THE    MORALISING    OF    DOGMA — ILLUSTRATED    BY   THE 
OMNIPOTENCE    OF    GOD 

Dogma,  the  intellectual  self-expression  of  a  living  Church.  It 
does  not  exclude  but  demand  criticism — on  its  own  evangelical  base. 
Melanchthons  words.  Early  dogma  was  too  little  lay  and  moral  in 
its  nature,  and  too  prominently  metaphysical,  especially  in  connexion 
with  Christ's  person.  We  begin  here  by  examining  the  empirical 
ideas  of  divine  greatness  and  omnipotence.  In  what  sense  God  is 
not  omnipotent.  The  union  of  two  natures  in  this  light  and  its 
unsatisfactory  moral  results. 

LECTURE   IX 

THE    SAME    ILLUSTRATED    BY   THE   ABSOLUTENESS    OF   CHRIST 

Let  US  get  at  truth  whatever  happen  to  tradition,  and  let  us  be 
exact  with  terms.  Neither  common  sense  nor  philosophy  gives  a 
basis  for  the  Incarnation,  but  at  most  only  points  of  attachment. 
It  can  only  be  proved  religiously — by  the  experience  of  its  own  action. 
The  true  assent  to  it  is  the  life-act  of  faith.  Application  to  religion 
of  the  idea  of  the  absolute.  It  is  an  experience — and  one  open  to 
all.  And  an  experience  of  the  historic  Christ.  And  of  him  as  final 
judge  and  redeemer.  The  absoluteness  of  holy  love  has  other 
methods  than  the  philosophic  absolute,  however  adjustable  they 
may  be.     "  Morality  {i.e.  experience)  the  soul  of  things." 

LECTURE   X 

THE    PRE-EXISTENCE    OF    CHRIST 

As  emphasis  moves  from  the  Virgin  birth,  we  must  go  to  explain 
Christ  by  His  pre-existence.  The  paucity  of  allusion  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  the  two  ways  of  explaining  it.  Was  Christ  at  every 
hour  conscious  of  all  He  was  ?  His  pre-existence  and  its  kenotic 
renunciation  are  needful  to  explain  the  volume  and  finality  of  the 
Church's  adoring  faith.  Had  Christ  an  esoteric  teaching,  reflected 
in  John  ?  The  pre-existence  of  Christ  cannot  be  directly  verified 
by  experience  as  His  present  life  may  be.  But  experience,  though 
the  mode  of  faith,  is  not  its  measure.  A  Christ  who  existed  for  the 
first  time  on  earth  is  not  adequate  to  the  classic  experience  of 
the  New  Creation,  and  especially  to  the  regeneration  of  the  race. 
The  chief  object  of  such  a  doctrine  is  not  philosophical  nor  even 
theological,  but    religious — to    give    effect    to    the    depths    of    the 


Synopsis  xix 

condescending  love  of  God.  Jesus  the  only  man  in  whom  the 
relation  to  God  constitutes  his  personality.  He  embodied  not  simply 
the  divine  idea,  nor  the  divine  purpose,  but  God's  presence  with  us. 
And  this  He  did  not  by  the  acquisition  of  a  divine  personality, 
but  by  its  redintegration  through  a  moral  process. 


LECTURE  XI 

THE    KENOSIS,    OR    SELF-EMPTYING   OF    CHRIST 

Some  doctrine  of  kenosis  is  called  for  if  we  hold  the  pre-existence. 
There  are  difficulties,  but  it  is  a  choice  of  difficulties.  And  they 
are  more  scientific  than  religious,  as  they  concern  the  how  and  not 
the  what.  A  series  of  analogies  in  the  experience  of  life.  Must  a 
complete  self-emptying  part  with  holiness  and  share  our  sin  ? 
Only  temptation,  and  not  sin,  is  truly  human.  True  freedom 
possible  only  to  the  holy.  What  then  was  renounced?  Omni- 
science, etc.  ?  The  attributes  of  God  cannot  be  parted  with  ;  but 
they  may  be  retracted  into  a  different  mode  of  being,  and  from 
actual  become  potential.  Such  a  view  leaves  us  untroubled  by 
the  limitations  and  ignorances  of  Christ.  He  consented  not  to 
know,  and  was  mighty  not  to  do. 

LECTURE    XII 

THE  PLEROSIS,    OR    THE    SELF-FULFILMENT    OF   CHRIST  V/ 

A  Christ  merely  kenotic  would  be  but  negative.  And  we  must  be 
positive.  In  humbling  Himself,  Christ  must  realise  Himself.  And 
His  self-realisation  must  mean  our  redemption.  Failure  to  find  this 
positivity  in  the  Chalcedonian  doctrine  of  the  two  natures.  Persons 
now  count  for  more  than  natures  in  an  Ethical  Faith.  It  profits 
more,  therefore,  to  speak  of  the  involution  and  fulfilment  in  Christ 
of  two  personal  movements — the  manward  movement  of  God  and 
the  Godward  movement  of  man,  each  personal,  and  both  meeting 
and  blending  in  the  person  of  the  Son.  The  growth  of  Christ's 
personality  was  the  growth  of  human  redemption.  In  His  person 
the  Agent  of  creation  became  such  a  soul  as  He  was  wont  to  make 
— for  a  purpose  possible  only  to  Godhead.  He  was  creaturely,  but 
uncreated — all  men's  creator  in  a  true  man's  life.  What  we  really 
mean  by  the  Godhead  and  manhood  of  Christ. 


/ 


LECTURE    I 
LAY     RELIGION 


LECTURE   I 


LAY     RELIGION 


The  root  of  all  theology  is  real  religion  ;  of  all  Christian 
theology,  and  even  apologetic,  it  is  Christian  religion,  it 
is  saving  faith  in  Jesus  Christ.  It  is  justifying  faith,  in  the 
sense  of  faith  in  a  forgiving  God  through  the  cross  of 
Jesus  Christ.  But  this  religion  cannot  be  stated  without 
theology.  If  theology  can  be  shewn  to  be  irrelevant  to  a 
living  and  evangelical  faith,  then  the  Church  can  afford 
to  treat  it  with  some  indifference,  and  to  leave  its  pursuit, 
like  philosophy,  to  the  Universities.  But  the  Christian 
religion  is  theological  or  nothing.  We  are  but  vaguely 
and  partially  right  in  saying  that  Christ  is  the  Gospel. 
Years  ago  to  say  that  was  the  needful  word  ;  but  it  is  now 
outgrown  and  inadequate.  The  Gospel  is  a  certain  in- 
terpretation of  Christ  which  is  given  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, a  mystic  interpretation  of  a  historic  fact.  It  is 
the  loving,  redeeming  grace  of  a  holy  God  in  Christ  and 
His  salvation  alone.  Theology,  it  is  true,  does  not  deal 
with  thoughts  but  with  facts.  That  is  the  great  note  of 
modern  theology.  But  the  Christian  fact  is  not  an 
historic  fact  or  figure  simply;  it  is  a  superhistoric  fact 
living  on  in  the  new  experience  which  it  creates.  The 
fact  on  which  Christian  theology  works  is  the  Christ  of 


i 


4  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

faith  and  not  of  history  only,  of  inspiration  and  not 
mere  record,  of  experience  and  not  of  memory.  It  is 
the  Christ  of  the  Church's  saving,  justifying  faith. 

A  Christianity  without  such  faith  is  not  Christianity. 
Spiritual  sensibility  is  not  Christianity,  nor  is  any  degree 
of  refined  unction.  A  spirituality  without  positive,  and 
even  dogmatic,  content  is  not  Christianity ;  nor  are 
gropings  when  stated  as  dogmas  ;  nor  is  a  faith  in  the 
broad  general  truths  of  religion.  Christian  faith  must 
surely  dogmatise  about  the  goodness  of  God  in  Christ,  at 
the  least.  A  conversion  which  is  but  a  wave  of  spiritual 
experience  is  not  the  passage  from  death  to  life.  Religion 
can  only  be  made  more  real  by  a  deepened  sense  of  the 
reality  of  the  salvation.  An  access  of  religion  which  does 
not  mean,  first  or  last,  a  deeper  repentance  and  a  more 
personal  faith  in  Christ's  salvation  may  be  sincere  enough, 
and  it  is  certainly  better  than  worldliness  or  unconcern ; 
but  it  is  not  believing  unto  life.  It  is  not  New  Testa- 
ment Christianity.  And,  tender  as  we  should  be  to  it  as 
a  stage,  we  must  be  very  explicit  when  it  is  offered  as  a 
goal.  Gentle  as  we  may  be  to  it  as  a  search,  we  must  be 
quite  plain  with  those  who  proclaim  it  as  the  great  find. 
If  Claverhouse  had  developed  a  mystical  piety  which 
made  him  deeply  sensitive  to  the  devotions  of  his  Church  ; 
or,  if  Alva  had  retired  into  a  monastery  and  spent  his 
time  in  sincere  devotion  on  the  exercises  of  Loyola  and 
beatific  visions ;  if  they  forswore  their  old  aggression, 
and  melted  to  their  depths  at  the  presence  of  the  sacra- 
ment; and  if  it  was  all  unmingled  with  a  repentance  still 
more  deep,  because  they  had  harried  the  Church  of  God, 
wounded  his  faithful  saints,  and  crucified  Christ  afresh, 
what  would  there  be  in  that  to  place  them  in  the  same 
faith  as  Paul,  or  the  same  spiritual  company  ?    I  remember 


I.]  Lay  Religion  5 

Bradlaugh  and  his  violent  iconoclastic  days,  so  able, 
ardent  and  ignorant.  And  he  might  stand  for  a  type  of 
others.  If  such  men  developed  one  of  those  spiritual 
reactions  which  lead  some  of  the  unbalanced  to  a  religious- 
ness as  extreme  as  their  aggression  had  been  ;  had  a 
long-starved  soul  burst  into  an  Indian  summer  of  mystic 
sensibility  and  abstract  piety,  which  all  the  time  was 
little  troubled  about  the  old  intellectualist  arrogance  and 
ignorant  insolence,  the  rending  of  Churches,  the  grief 
caused  to  the  old  disciples,  or  the  shipwreck  made  of 
many  a  young  faith  ;  if  the  new  sense  of  God  brought  no 
humiliation,  no  crushing,  and  almost  desperate,  repent- 
ance, curable  only  by  a  very  positive  faith  and  new  life  of 
forgiveness  in  Christ  and  His  Cross ;  what  were  the 
Christian  value  of  such  a  piety  ?  Would  such  a  religion 
have  much  more  than  subjective  worth  as  a  phase  of 
religious  experience  more  interesting  to  the  psychologist 
than  precious  for  the  Gospel  ? 

The  essential  thing  in  a  new  Testament  Christianity 
is  that  it  came  to  settle  in  a  final  way  the  issue  between 
a  holy  God  and  the  guilt  of  man.  All  else  is  secondary. 
All  criticism  is  a  minor  matter  if  that  be  secure.  The 
only  deadly  criticism  is  what  makes  that  incredible  ;  the 
only  mischievous  criticism  is  what  makes  that  less  credible. 
And  all  the  beauties  and  charms  of  a  temperamental 
religion,  like  Francis  Newman's,  for  instance,  or  Kenan's, 
or  many  a  Buddhist's,  are  insignificant  compared  with  a 
man's  living  attitude  to  that  work  of  God's  grace  for  the 
world  once  and  for  ever  in  Jesus  Christ. 

§         §         § 
A   faith  whose  object   is    not    such    a    Christ    is    not 

Christianity;  at   least   it   is  not  New  Testament   Chris- 
tianity ;  and  the  great  battle  is  now  for  a  New  Testament 
c 


6  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jfsns  Christ  [lect. 

Christianity.  It  is  not  faith  in  Christ  when  we  rise  no 
higher  than  "  just  a  man,  but  what  a  man  !  "  You  cannot 
use  the  word  faith  in  relation  to  a  Christ  Hke  that.  Faith 
is  an  attitude  we  can  take  only  to  God.  God  is  the  only 
correlate  of  faith,  if  we  use  words  with  any  con- 
science. Faith  in  Christ  involves  the  Godhead  of  Christ. 
Faith  in  Christ,  in  the  positive  Christian  sense,  means 
much  more  than  a  relation  to  God  to  which  Christ 
supremely  helps  us.  It  is  a  communion  possible  not 
through,  but  only  m  Christ  and  Him  crucified.  It  means 
that  to  be  in  Christ  is  to  be  in  God.  It  means  the  ex- 
perience that  the  action  of  Christ  with  us  is  God's  action, 
that  Christ  does  for  us  and  in  us  what  holy  God  alone  can 
do,  and  that  in  meeting  with  Christ  we  meet  with  God. 
When  it  comes  to  revelation,  only  God  could  do  justice 
to  God.  Theologically,  faith  in  Christ  means  that  the 
person  of  Christ  must  be  interpreted  by  what  that  saving 
action  of  God  in  him  requires,  that  Christ's  work  is  the 
master  key  to  His  person,  that  His  benefits  interpret  His 
nature.  It  means,  when  theologically  put,  that  Christ- 
ology  is  the  corollary  of  Soteriology  ;  for  a  Christology 
vanishes  with  the  reduction  of  faith  to  mere  religion.  It 
means  that  the  deity  of  Christ  is  at  the  centre  of  Chris- 
tian truth  for  us  because  it  is  the  postulate  of  the  redemp- 
tion which  is  Christianity,  because  it  alone  makes  the 
classic  Christian  experience  possible  for  thought.  I  am 
not  judging  individuals,  I  speak  of  types  of  religion  ;  and 
I  suggest  that  the  Christian  experience,  for  the  Church 
if  not  for  every  individual  maturing  in  it,  is  the  evan- 
gelical experience,  the  new  creation  in  atoning  forgiveness. 
It  is  not  mere  love  and  admiration  of  Jesus,  however 
passionate.  It  is  not  simply  a  hearty  conviction  of  the 
Christian   principle.      Nor  is  it  a  temper  of  Christian 


I.]  Lay  Religion  7 

charity.  When  Paul  said  he  had  the  mind  of  Christ 
he  did  not  mean  the  temper  of  Christ  ;  he  meant  the 
theology  of  Christ.  And  by  that  he  meant  not  the 
theology  held  by  the  earthly  Christ,  but  that  taught 
him  by  Christ  in  heaven.  A  reference  to  i  Cor.  ii.  i6 
will  show  this  at  once.  "  Who  hath  known  (by  a  gnosis) 
the  mind  of  the  Lord  that  he  may  instruct  Him  ?  But 
we  have  (by  faith)  the  mind  of  Christ."  That  is,  of  the 
Lord,  the  Spirit. 

§         §         § 

The   theology    that   turns    merely   on    the    Christian 

principle  (taken  as  distinct  from  Christ's  perennial  person) 
reduces  Christ's  character  to  a  far  too  placid  level,  which 
does  not  correspond  to  the  passionate  Christ  of  Synoptic 
history.  Perhaps  a  one-sided  reading  of  the  Johannine 
Christ  might  mislead  us  to  think  thus  of  Him,  But  his 
was  no  Phidian  majesty.  He  was  not  calmly,  massively, 
and  harmoniously  filled  by  a  principle  of  divine  sonship, 
whose  peace  was  as  a  brimming  river  ;  for  a  pious  sage,  a 
Christian  Goethe,  might  be  that.  The  sinlessness  of 
Jesus  was  not  of  that  natural,  sweet,  poised,  remote,  and 
aesthetic  type.  It  was  not  the  harmonious  development 
of  that  principle  of  sonship  through  the  quietly  deepen- 
ing experiences  of  life— just  as  His  nightly  communion 
cannot  have  been  simply  a  blessed  and  oblivious  respite 
from  the  task  of  each  day,  but  its  offering,  outspreading, 
and  disentangling  before  the  Father  who  prescribed  it. 
Gethsemane  was  not  the  first  agony.  Each  great  season 
was  a  crisis,  and  sometimes  a  stormy  crisis,  in  which  the 
next  step  became  clear.  There  is  much  truth  in  Keim's 
treatment  of  Christ's  temperament  as  the  choleric.  Tiie 
sinless  certainty  of  Jesus  was  the  result  of  constant 
thought,  passion,  and  conllict  as  to  his  course  and  victory. 


8  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

crowned  by  the  crisis  of  all  His  crises  in  the  decision  and 
triumph  of  His  cross.  And  His  power  was  not  quies- 
cent, reserved  strength  alone.  It  was  not  monumental. 
But  it  was  energy  put  forth  in  a  positive  conflict,  in 
mortal  moral  strife  for  the  overthrow  of  God's  enemy, 
through  the  redemption  of  the  race,  the  forgiveness  of  its 
guilt,  and  its  moral  re-creation. 

And  to  such  a  Christ  Christian  faith  corresponds.  It 
is  not  a  warm  sense  of  sonship  as  the  crowning  form  of 
natural  religion  or  of  a  devout  temperament.  It  is  not 
a  frame  of  reasonable  views,  benignant  charity,  patient 
pity,  and  strong  repose.  It  is  the  experience  of  having 
in  Christ,  His  crisis,  and  His  victory,  that  salvation, 
that  pardon,  that  new  life  which  God  alone  can  give.  It 
is  not  looking  up  trustfully  to  a  loving  Father,  but  giving 
one's  self  thankfully  to  a  redeeming  Saviour  and  His 
Father.  Again  I  say  I  am  not  speaking  of  ripening 
individuals,  but  of  that  corporate,  central,  and  classic 
experience  which  gives  the  type  of  every  other,  makes 
the  Church  the  Church,  and  carries  the  note  of  the  Gospel. 

§         §         § 
One  is  tempted  sometimes  to  speak  to  preachers  in  this 

vein  :  "  Yes,  the  incarnation  is  the  centre  of  Christianity, 
and  you  must  convince  people  that  it  is  so.  But  it  is  an 
intricate  question.  Its  true  solution  is  beyond  the 
average  man.  Perhaps  you  can  best  accommodate  it  to 
your  lay  hearers  if  you  take  it  on  the  experimental  side, 
and  bid  them  believe  that  Christ  was  God  because  He 
forgives  and  redeems  as  God  only  can.  But,  of  course, 
for  the  real  grounds  of  the  belief  more  deep  and  philo- 
sophic considerations  are  involved.  And  these  are 
beyond  you  ;  they  must  be  left  to  the  Church  through 
its  theologians.    And  lay  faith  in  the  incarnation  must  be 


r.]  Lay  Religion  g 

a  fides  implicita,  or  the  acceptance  of  something  which 
experience  only  indicates,  but  does  not  found." 

The  advice  in  its  first  part  is  good  ;  but  in  its  second 
it  is  bad  and  dangerous,  and  it  would  put  Christ  at  the 
mercy  of  theological  Erahmans.  It  is  quite  true  that  the 
scientific  treatment  of  the  question  leads  into  regions 
where  the  lay  believer  is  not  at  home.  But  these  regions 
are  only  the  hinterland  of  that  historic  Christ  within 
our  personal  experience — within  an  experience  where  the 
believer  is  not  only  at  home,  but  has  his  birth  and  being 
as  a  Christian.  All  Christology  exists  in  the  interest  of 
the  evangelical  faith  of  the  layman  who  has  in  Jesus 
Christ  the  pardon  of  his  sins  and  everlasting  life.  We 
are  all  laymen  here.  It  is  quite  misplaced  patronage  to 
condescend  to  lay  experience  with  the  superiority  of  the 
academic  theologian  or  the  idealist  philosopher,  and  to 
treat  such  lay  experience  of  the  Gospel  as  if  it  were  good 
enough  for  most,  and  the  only  one  they  are  yet  fit  for, 
but  if  they  passed  through  the  schools  they  would  be  able 
to  put  their  belief  on  another  and  better  footing.  It  is 
the  evangelical  experience  of  every  saved  soul  that  is  the 
real  foundation  of  Christological  belief  anywhere.  For 
Christ  was  not  the  epiphany  of  an  idea,  nor  the  epitome 
of  a  race,  nor  the  incarnation,  the  precipitate,  of  a 
metaphysic — whatever  metaphysic  he  may  imply.  The 
theology  of  the  incarnation  is  necessary  to  explain  our 
Christian  experience  and  not  our  rational  nature,  nor  our 
religious  psychology.  It  is  not  a  philosophical  necessity, 
nor  a  metaphysical,  but  an  evangelical.  Philosophy,  on 
the  whole,  is  perhaps  against  it.  And  the  adoption  of  the 
tone  I  deprecate  is  but  a  survival  of  the  bad  old  time  when 
we  had  to  begin  with  a  belief  in  the  incarnation  (on  the 
authority  of  the  Ciiurch  and  its  metaphysical  theologians 


10  Th(  Person  and  Place  of  Jestis  Christ  [lect. 

as  set  out  in  the  creeds)  before  we  could  have  the  benefit 
of  an  evangelical  faith.  It  is  on  the  contrary  an  evan- 
gelical faith  like  a  converted  miner's  that  makes  any 
belief  in  the  incarnation  necessary  or  possible  at  last. 
""We  begin  with  facts  of  experience,  not  with  forms  of 
thought.  First  the  Gospel  then  its  theology,  first 
redemption  then  incarnation — that  is  the  order  of  experi- 
ence. That  is  positive  Christianity;  which  isas  distinct 
from  rational  orthodoxy  on  the  one  hand  as  it  is  from 
rational  heresy  on  the  other.'  The  mighty  thing  in 
Christ  is  his  grace  and  not  His  constitution — the  fact 
that  it  is  God's  grace  that  we  have  in  Him,  and  no  mere 
echo  of  it,  no  witness  to  it,  or  tribute  to  it.  That  is  our 
Christian  faith.  And  that  certainty  of  the  saved  experi- 
ence is  the  one  foundation  of  all  theology  in  such 
Churches  as  are  not  stifled  in  mediaeval  methods  or  bur-  J 
dened  by  their  unconscious  survival. . 

§         §         § 
It  is  this  unique  experience  of  a  unique  Saviour  who  is 

the  new  Creator  that  we  have  to  urge  in  the  face  of  every 
theory  that  makes  it  impossible  and  of  every  practice 
that  would  make  it  nugatory.  And  at  the  present  day 
we  have  to  make  it  good  both  in  life  and  in  thought — in 
life  against  the  mere  bustle  of  progress,  and  in  thought 
against  a  mere  procession  of  evolution  that  has  no  goal 
already  latent  at  its  centre. 

The  evolutionary  idea  is  certainly  compatible  with 
Christianity ;  but  not  so  long  as  it  claims  to  be  the  su- 
preme idea,  to  which  Christianity  must  be  shaped. 
Evolution  is  within  Christianity,  but  Christianity  is  not 
within  evolution.  For  evolution  means  the  rule  of  a 
levelling  relativism,  which  takes  from  Christ  His  absolute 
value  and  final  place,  reduces  Him  to  be  but  a  stage  of 


I.]  Lay  Religion  ii 

God's  revelation,  or  a  phase  of  it  that  can  be  outgrown, 
and  makes  Him  the  less  of  a  Creator  as  it  ranges  Him 
vividly  in  the  scale  of  the  creature.  There  is  no  such 
foe  to  Christianity  in  thought  to-day  as  this  idea  is  ;  and 
we  can  make  no  terms  with  it  so  long  as  it  claims  the 
throne.  The  danger  is  the  greater  as  the  theory  grows 
more  religious,  as  it  becomes  sympathetic  with  a  Christ 
it  does  not  worship,  and  praises  a  Christ  to  whom  it  does 
not  pray.  A  book  so  devout  as  Bousset's  Jesus  does  for 
the  Saviour  what  the  one-eyed  Wotan  did  so  tenderly  for 
Brunnhilde  within  the  touching  Feuerzauber,  "  Ich  kiisse 
die  Gottheit  dir  ab," '•  I  kiss  thy  Godhead  away."  To 
say  that  evolution  is  God's  supreme  method  with  the 
world  is  to  rule  out  Christ  as  His  final  revelation.  It  is  to 
place  Christ  but  at  a  point  in  the  series,  and  to  find  Him 
most  valuable  when  he  casts  our  thoughts  forward 
from  himself  to  a  greater  revelation  which  is  bound  to 
come  if  evolution  go  on.  But  when  Christ's  finality 
is  gone,  Christianity  is  gone.  Yea,  and  progress 
itself  is  gone.  For  there  is  no  faith  in  progress  perma- 
nently possible  without  that  standard  of  progress  which 
we  have  in  Christ,  the  earnest  of  the  inheritance,  the 
proleptic  goal  of  history,  the  foregone  sum  of  the  whole 
matter  of  man.  Progress  without  any  certainty  of  the 
goal  is  as  impossible  in  practice  as  it  is  senseless  in 
thought.  It  is  mere  motion,  mere  change.  We  need  a 
standard  to  determine  whether  movement  be  progress. 
And  the  only  standard  is  some  prevenient  form  or  action 
of  the  final  goal  itself.  Our  claim  is  that  for  religion  the 
standard  is  God's  destiny  for  man,  presented  in  advance 
in  Christ — presented  there,  and  not  merely  pictured — 
presented  to  man,  not  achieved  by  him — given  us  as  a 
pure  present  and  gift  of  grace — and  presented  finally  there. 


12  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

Man  has  in  Christ  the  reality  of  his  destiny,  and  not   a 
prophecy  of  it. 

§  §  § 
We  are  often  adjured  to  go  the  whole  length  of  our 
Protestant  principle  by  insisting  that  Christianity  is  a  lay 
religion,  not  a  priestly,  and  by  adjusting  the  form  of  our 
Gospel  to  the  lay  mind.  But  this  adjustment  is  coming 
to  mean  something  which  provokes  a  little  doubt  whether 
we  have  any  positive  idea  of  what  a  lay  religion  means. 
It  properly  means  an  experienced  religion  of  direct,  indi- 
vidual, and  forgiven  faith,  in  which  we  are  not  at  the 
mercy  of  a  priestly  order  of  men,  a  class  of  sacramental 
experts.  It  is  certainty  of  Christ's  salvation  at  first  hand, 
by  personal  forgiveness  through  the  cross  of  Christ  in  the 
Holy  Ghost.  It  does  not  mean  a  non-mediatorial  reli- 
gion, a  religion  stripped  of  the  priestly  order  of  acts  or 
ideas.  New  Testament  Christianity  is  a  priestly  religion 
or  it  is  nothing.  It  gathers  about  a  priestly  cross  on 
earth  and  a  Great  High  Priest  Eternal  in  the  heavens. 
It  means  also  the  equal  priesthood  of  each  believer.  But 
it  means  much  more.  That  by  itself  is  ruinous  indi- 
vidualism. It  means  the  collective  priesthood  of  the 
Church  as  one.  The  greatest  function  of  the  Church 
in  full  communion  with  Him  is  priestly.  It  is  to 
confess,  to  sacrifice,  to  intercede  for  the  whole  human 
race  in  Him.  The  Church,  and  those  who  speak  in  its 
name,  have  power  and  commandment  to  declare  to  the 
world  being  penitent  the  absolution  and  remission  of 
its  sins  in  Him.  The  Church  is  to  stand  thus,  with  the 
world's  sins  for  a  load,  but  the  word  of  the  atoning  cross 
for  the  lifting  of  it.  That  is  apostolic  Christianity. 
That  is  the  Gospel.  Evangelical  Christianity  is  media- 
torial both  in  faith  and  function. 


I.)  Lay  Religion  13 

But,  in  the  name  of  a  simplicity  which  is  not  Christ's, 
lay  Christianity  is  ceasing  to  be  even  the  priesthood  of 
each  believer  in  virtue  of  the  priesthood  of  Christ.  It  is 
coming  to  be  understood  as  the  rejection  of  apostolic, 
mediatorial,  atoning  Christianity  and  the  sanctification 
of  natural  piety — sometimes  only  its  refinement.  It  is 
more  preoccupied  with  ethical  conduct  than  with  moral 
malady,  with  the  fundamental  truths  of  religion  than  with 
the  fontal  truths  of  mercy.  And  whereas  we  used  to  be 
able  to  appeal  to  our  laymen  and  their  experience  against 
a  Socinian  and  undogmatic  and  non-mediatorial  Chris- 
tianity, we  can  now  appeal  to  them  only  against  a 
sacerdotal  and  clerical.  We  used  to  be  able  to  take 
refuge  from  Arianism  (to  which  the  ministers  of  the 
Church  might  be  tempted  by  certain  philosophies),  in 
the  evangelical  experience  of  its  members.  We  used  to 
think  that  the  sense  of  sin  which  was  lost  from  the 
intellectuals  or  the  worldlings  would  be  found  among  the 
Christian  men  who  were  in  lay  contact  with  the  world, 
its  temptations,  its  lapses,  and  its  tragedies.  But  expe- 
rience hardly  now  bears  out  this  hope.  Perhaps  the 
general  conscience  has  succumbed  to  the  cheap  comforts 
and  varied  interests  of  life ;  or  the  modern  stress  on  the 
sympathies  has  muffled  the  moral  note ;  or  the  decency 
of  life  has  stifled  the  need  of  mercy;  or  Christian  liberty 
has  in  the  liberty  lost  the  Christ.  But,  whatever  the 
cause,  the  lay  mind  becomes  only  too  ready  to  interpret 
sin  in  a  softer  light  than  God's,  and  to  see  it  only  under 
the  pity  of  a  Lord  to  whom  judgment  is  quite  a  strange 
work,  and  who  forgives  all  because  He  knows  all.  It  is 
on  a  broken  reed  we  too  often  lean  when  we  turn  from 
the  theologian's  "subtleties"  to  rely  on  the  layman's 
faith.      For  the  layman  becomes    slow  to  own  a  faith 


14  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

which  begins  in  repentance  rather  than  benevolence. 
He  is  slow  to  confess  a  sin  that  is  more  than  backward- 
ness, untowardness,  or  ignorance.  The  number  grows 
of  high  and  clean-living  youths  who  cherish  an  ideal 
Christianity  but  feel  no  need  for  a  historic  and  perennial 
Christ.  The  tendency  of  the  lay  mind  is  backward 
to  the  eighteenth  century,  to  a  wise,  humane,  and  urbane 
religion,  only  enlarged  by  all  the  ideality  and  fraternity 
that  enlarge  Deism  to  modern  Theism.  It  goes  back 
to  a  religion  of  belief  in  human  nature,  of  spiritual 
bonhommie,  of  vague  and  kindly  optimism,  of  good 
sense,  well-doing,  and  such  a  sober  estimate  of  the  state 
of  things  between  God  and  man  as  avoids  extreme  ideas 
like  curse,  perdition,  mortal  vigilance,  or  any  eternally 
perilous  edge  of  life.  It  is  the  type  of  religion  which 
commends  itself  to  the  intelligent,  sympathetic,  active 
and  well-disposed  young  Christian,  who  would  like,  above 
all  things,  for  righteousness'  sake,  to  be  an  active 
politician,  alderman,  or  member  of  Parliament.  This  is 
an  excellent  Christian  ambition.  May  it  spread  !  But  it 
is  often  the  ambition  of  a  type  of  man  who  tends  to 
treat  positive  Christianity  as  theology,  and  to  regard  the 
theologian  of  an  Atonement  as  our  fathers  did  the  priest, 
or  as  the  Sicilians  regard  a  sanitary  officer  —  to  treat 
him,  at  the  worst,  as  a  gratuitous  sophisticator  of  things 
very  ancient,  simple,  and  elemental,  or  as  a  mere  survival, 
now  useless  or  even  mischievous.  Or  it  views  him,  at 
the  best,  as  a  harmless  hobbyist,  no  better  than  a  philoso- 
pher. Such  lay  religion  is  ceasing  to  regard  the  apostles 
with  their  priestly  Gospel  of  Christ  as  laymen.  It  treats 
them  as  theologians,  and  in  so  far  complicators.  It 
views  them  as  confusing  the  lay  issue.  It  would  eliminate 
the  priestly  and  atoning  element  from  the  nature  of  the 


I.]  Lay  Religion  15 

Gospel,  for  a  kind  of  religion  which  is  but  a  spiritualising 
of  the  natural  man,  or  a  mystic  devoutness.  It  regards 
Christ  as  the  most  inspired  of  the  prophets  of  God's 
love,  the  most  radical  of  social  reformers,  and  the  noblest 
of  elder  brothers.  Whereas,  the  Church  must  stand  on 
Christ  the  priest,  His  sacrifice,  and  His  redemption  ; 
and  it  could  not  stand,  as  it  did  not  arise,  upon  Christ 
the  beneficent  prophet  or  noble  martyr.  And  the 
condition  of  our  Churches  shows  that  this  is  so.  With 
an  ideal  or  a  fraternal  Christ  they  dwindle  and  the 
power  goes  out  of  them. 

§         §         § 

I  am  trying  to  avoid  the  dogmatism  of  dogma.  But  I 
am  also  striving  concisely  to  sharpen  the  issue,  to  be 
explicit  and  clear,  and  to  point  the  choice  the  Church 
must  make  or  go  under.  And  the  Free  Churches  the 
first. 

Revelation  did  not  come  in  a  statement,  but  in  a 
person  ;  yet  stated  it  must  be.  Faith  must  go  on  to 
specify.  It  must  be  capable  of  statement,  else  it  could 
not  be  spread  ;  for  it  is  not  an  ineffable,  incommunicable 
mysticism.  It  has  its  truth,  yet  it  is  not  a  mere  truth 
but  a  power  ;  its  truth,  its  statement,  its  theology,  is 
part  of  it.  There  is  theology  and  "theology."  There 
is  the  theology  which  is  a  part  of  the  Word,  and  the 
theology  which  is  a  product  of  it.  There  is  a  theology 
which  is  sacramental  and  is  the  body  of  Christ,  so  to 
say ;  and  there  is  a  theology  which  is  but  scientific 
and  descriptive  and  memorial.  There  is  a  theology 
which  quickens,  and  one  which  elucidates.  There  is  a 
theology  which  is  valuable  because  it  is  evangelical,  and 
one  which  is  valuable  because  it  is  scholastic.  It  is  no 
Christianity  which  cannot  say  :  "  I   believe  in   God   the 


i6  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

Creator,  who,  in  Christ,  is  my  Almighty  Father,  Judge 
and  Redeemer."  That  is  theology,  but  not  "  theology." 
It  is  pure  religion  and  undefiled.  It  is  worlds  more 
precious  than  any  freedom  that  forwandered  spirits  deify 
in  its  place.  But  our  laity  has  not  yet  learned  to 
distinguish  between  these  two  senses  of  Christian  truth. 
They  are  ghost-ridden.  They  are  obsessed  by  a  mere 
tradition  of  the  long  gone  days,  when  the  theologians 
made  a  hierarchy  which  only  changed  the  form  but  not  the 
spirit  of  the  Roman  ;  when  the  Reformation  succumbed 
to  a  theological  hierarchy  instead  of  a  sacerdotal ;  when 
the  laity,  who  were  not  professional  theologians,  had  to 
take  an  intricate  system  from  the  experts,  with  an 
implicit  faith  like  that  of  Rome  in  the  old  days,  or,  in 
new  days,  like  the  implicit  faith  with  which  the  inexpert 
readers  swallow  the  expert  critics ;  when  the  laity  took 
over  this  faith  provided  for  them,  and  only  made  it  their 
business  to  see  it  accepted  and  carried  through  into 
public  life  by  others  equally  unable  to  judge  it.  What 
the  laity  is  suffering  from  is  the  feeble  afterwash  of  the 
long  past  days  of  tests.  But  the  ministry  in  the  main, 
and  the  theologians  in  particular,  have  for  some  genera- 
tions now  moved  forward  into  another  world  of  things, 
another  habit  of  thought,  and  another  kind  of  authority. 
And  our  competent  guides  know  this.  But  our  laity  to 
a  large  extent  do  not  know  it,  and  they  are  played  upon 
by  those  who  know  just  a  little  more.  They  are  victims 
to  an  anachronist  suspicion  of  an  obsolete  "  theology," 
when  they  should  be  confessors  of  personal  faith  and  its 
vital  theology,  if  Christianity  is  not  to  be  lost  in  the 
sand.  It  would  be  a  deadly  calamity  if  we  were  to  relapse 
to  that  dogmatocracy,  that  rule  of  the  professional 
theologian,  that  Protestant  Catholicism  which  half-ruined 


I.]  Lay  Religion  17 

Lutheran  Protestantism  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
How  great  a  calamity  it  would  be,  we  are  able  to  mark, 
when  we  observe  the  effects  of  our  subjection  to-day  to 
the  negative  dogmatocracy  of  the  critics,  evolutionists, 
monists,  and  socialists  who  take  Christianity  in  hand  in 
the  interest  of  dogma  which  changes  its  spots  but  not 
its  spirit. 

§         §         § 
Lay  religion  tends  to  be  simple,  easy,  and  domestic 
religion,  with  a  due  suspicion   not  only  of  a  priesthood 
but  even  of  a  ministry.     Some  sections  of  it  are  more 
interested  in  the  children   than   in  the  ministry.     They 
believe  in  schools,  hospitals,  temperance,  boys'  brigades, 
and  all  the  excellent   things  the   mayor  can  open ;  with 
sometimes  but  small  insight    and    distant   respect  for  the 
deeper  things  that  dawn  upon  the  experts  of  the  Soul, 
and  do  not  go  straight  home   to  business  or  bosom.     It 
is  preoccupied  with  righteousness  as  conduct  more  than 
with  faith  as  life  indeed.     It  thinks  the  holiness  of  God 
a  theological  term,  because  nothing  but  love  appeals  to 
the  young   people  who   must  be  won.     If  it  only  knew 
how    the    best    of    the    young    people  turn   from  such 
novelistic  piety  !     And  the  view  taken  of  sin  corresponds. 
Sin  is  an  offence  against  righteousness  or  love  instead  of 
against  holiness  ;  and  it  can  be  put  straight  by  repentance 
and  amendment  without  such  artifices  as  atonement.     It 
just  means  going  wrong;  it  does  not  mean  being  guilty. 
The  cross  is  not  a  sacrifice  for  guilt,  but  a  divine  object- 
lesson  in  self-sacrifice  for  people  or  principles.     The  lay 
mind  tends  to  associate  a  sense  of  sin  with  the  morbid 
side  of  human   nature,   or  with   the   studies  of  men  who 
are  in  more  contact  with  a  theological  past  than  with  a 
human  present.     Christ  saves  from   misery,  and  wrong. 


l8  The  Person  and  Place  of  Je-us  Christ  [lect. 

and  bad  habits,  and  self  distrust ;  but  not  from  guilt. 
He  reveals  a  Father  who  is  but  rarely  a  judge,  and  then 
only  for  corrective  purposes.  The  idea  of  a  soul  absolutely 
forfeit,  and  of  its  salvation  in  a  new  creation,  grows 
foreign  to  the  lay  mind.  And  the  deep  root  of  it  all  is 
the  growing  detachment  of  that  mind  from  the  Bible,  and 
its  personal  disuse. 

And  this  lay  religion  the  pulpit  is  occasionally  tempted 
to  adopt,  partly  from  wrong  education,  partly  from 
poverty  of  nature  or  belief,  partly  from  a  fear  of  seeming 
to  be  behind  date  or  out  of  touch  with  the  pew.  While 
those  preachers  who  do  not  thus  part  with  the  native 
language  of  the  Gospel,  and  to  whom  its  specialities  are 
the  true  realities,  are  apt  to  be  disheartened,  benumbed, 
and  paralysed  in  the  face  of  the  spiritual  self-satisfaction 
that  confronts  them,  the  this-worldiness,  the  at-homeness 
in  human  nature.  They  find  no  effective  fulcrum  in  a  laity 
like  that  for  any  protest  they  may  make  against  clerical 
priestliness.  They  find  but  a  platform  impatience,  and 
irritation,  and  invective.  And  they  begin  to  ask  if  clerical 
priesthood  deserves  all  the  denunciation  it  gets.  They 
ask  if  the  clerical  priest,  by  the  effect  he  does  give  to 
the  real  and  distinctive  priestliness  of  Christianity,  will 
not  always  be  stronger  than  a  lay  anti-priestliness  of  the 
unspiritual  sort.  They  would  rather  spend  less  time  and 
fury  upon  the  denunciation  of  priesthood,  and  more  upon 
an  effort  to  make  the  Churches  realise  the  priestliness 
they  have  all  but  lost.  What  shall  it  profit  any  Church 
to  commit  suicide  to  save  itself  from  slaughter. 

§         §         § 
It  is  probably  impossible  now  to  change  the  lay   men- 
tality  of  which   I  speak  in  those  who  are  its  victims. 
But  we  can  perhaps  save  the  next  generation  for  a  true 


I.]  Lay  Religion  ig 

Church.  We  can  teach  and  act  as  men  who  really  believe 
that  it  is  only  a  Church  of  true  priests  that  can  withstand 
a  Church  of  false  ones.  It  cannot  be  done  by  a  Church 
of  no  priests,  which  is  indeed  no  Church.  A  lay  religion, 
alien  to  apostolic  and  mediatorial  belief,  can  never 
make  head  against  the  evangelical  apostolicity  which 
may  lie  deep  but  potent  beneath  the  errors  of  sacerdotal 
Catholicism. 

We  have  laicised  the  idea  of  the  ministry  by  treating 
it  simply  as  one  of  the  departments  of  Christian  work. 
We  have  been  told  that  all  forms  of  Christian  life  are 
equally  sacred,  and  that  just  as  good  work  can  be  done 
for  Christ  in  the  Christian  pursuit  of  other  walks  of  life. 
And  the  half-truth  there  has  been  so  abused  and  over- 
driven that  the  Churches  send  their  most  capable  youth 
to  these  other  pursuits  (often  to  make  proof  how  false 
the  notion  of  their  equal  sanctity  can  become) ;  and  we 
tend  to  a  ministry  of  the  mentally  and  spiritually  inferior, 
unable  to  command  the  strong  and  capable  personalities. 
That  is  one  result  of  the  laicising  of  belief,  of  the  level- 
ling of  the  Gospel  to  life  instead  of  the  lifting  of  life  to 
the  Gospel.  It  is  the  result  of  erasing  the  feature  unique 
in  the  Gospel,  and  consequently  in  the  office  which 
preaches  it. 

§         §  § 

In  a  word,  as  I  say,  lay  religion  is  coming  to  be  under- 
stood as  the  antithesis,  not  of  sacerdotal  religion,  but 
of  theological,  of  atoning  religion  ;  that  is  to  say, 
really  of  New  Testament  Christianity.  And  so 
understood,  it  has  neither  power  nor  future.  And 
most  thorough  Christians  will  move  in  the  end  to  join 
that    Church,    free    or    bond,    which    has    most    of    the 


20  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

power,  the  future,  the  authority,  and   the  liberty  which 
are  in  the  Christ  of  the  Apostles,  and  of  the  Church. 

The  greatest  of  the   human   race  is  He  who,  as  the 
Holy  One  that  came  out  from  the  Father,  was  a  priest 
before  all  else,  and  who  has  for  His  chief  object  with 
the  world  the  ordination  of  all  men  in  a  Church  as  priests 
in  Him.     He  was  one  to  whose  sacrifice,  atonement,  and 
prayer  mankind  owes,  daily  and  for  ever  owes,  its  moral 
renovation  and  its  divine  destiny.     Christianity  is  such 
priestly  religion ;  it  is  not  what  tends  to  be  known  as  lay 
religion,    or  the   religion   that  arrests  the  well-disposed 
man  in  the  street.    It  is  the  religion  of  the  common  man 
who  lives  on  the  sacrifice  of  Christ.     If  the  belief  in  a 
priestly  Christianity  came  to  be  confined  to  the  ministry, 
then  spiritual  command  and  influence  would,  and  should, 
remain  with  the  ministry,  amid  whatever  errors  beside, 
amid  the  errors  even  of  Rome.     But  lay  religion,  in  the 
minimist    sense    of    the   word,    affectional    and    ethical 
religion,  will  never  save  us  from  the  perils  of  priestly  rule. 
For  it  cannot  give  us  our  Great  High   Priest,  eternal  in 
the  heavens.     And  it  certainly  cannot  unite  us  with  Him 
in  the  priesthood  of  a  true  Church.     They  are  logical 
enough  who  say  that  Incarnation,  Atonement,  Priesthood, 
and  a  Church  all  hang  together ;  so  that  having  denounced 
an  Atonement  they  must  go  on  to  denounce  a  Church. 
But  it  is  more  logical  still  to  extend  the  chain  and  go  on 
to    say   that   a    Church   with   all  these  beliefs  is  indis- 
solubly  bound  up  with  the  consummation  of  Humanity 
in  a  Kingdom  of  God. 

§         §         § 
There   is   a   misunderstanding    that   is  likely    enough 
here.     One    might   easily    incur   the    charge  of  being   a 
laudator  temporis  acti,  and  of  lamenting  the  former  days 


I.]  Lay  Religion  2i 

that  were  better  than  these.  I  would,  on  the  contrary, 
Slate  my  conviction  that  there  never  was  a  time  in  the 
history  of  the  world  when  there  were  so  many  souls  bent 
on  seeing  and  doing  the  will  of  God.  There  was  never 
a  time  when  spiritual  sympathies  and  appetites  were  so 
quick  and  general  as  to-day,  never  an  age  when  so 
many  were  set  upon  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  certain 
aspects  of  it  were  so  clearly  and  widely  seen. 

A  slight  knowledge  of  the  past  can  readily  mislead  us 
here.  We  too  easily  transfer  the  religious  eminence  of 
the  historic  saints  and  heroes  to  the  Christian  public  of 
their  time,  which  we  view  in  the  golden  haze  which 
radiates  from  them.  But  in  the  Middle  Ages  of  Anselm 
and  Bernard  personal  piety  was  almost  confined  to  the 
monasteries  and  convents.  The  rest  were  but  institutional 
Christians,  and  members  of  the  Church  without  being, 
or  professing  to  be,  members  of  Christ.  Men  were  religi- 
ous in  the  lump,  as  tribes  often  are  that  are  converted 
with  their  chiefs  but  unchanged  in  their  hearts.  And 
even  when  the  Reformation  substituted  personal  faith  for 
wholesale  religion  the  change  was  realised  but  by  few 
beyond  the  great  leaders.  The  passionate  interest  and 
conflict  of  the  hour  was  not  for  personal  piety,  but  for 
public  liberties,  for  the  right  of  Gospel  preaching,  for 
freedom  of  Confession,  or  for  a  national  Church.  And 
in  all  these  public  ardours  there  was  the  greatest  danger 
of  the  Reformation  burning  out,  and  the  old  Church 
flowing  back  over  its  ashes,  as  public  Christianity  is  en- 
dangering us  to-day.  What  saved  the  Reformation 
religiously  was  the  rise  of  Pietism,  which  rescued  faith 
both  from  the  politicians  and  the  theologians.  It  was 
not  till  then,  and  but  partially  then,  that  the  religion  of 
the  Reformation  penetrated  to  masses  of  people.  Had 
D 


22  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

it  done  so  before,  the  counter-Reformation  would  have 
been  impossible.  But  before  Pietism  could  fully  reach 
the  large  Christian  public  as  personal  experience,  the 
rationalism  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  begun  to  give 
off  its  widespread  chill. 

So  I  venture  to  say  there  are  more  spiritually-minded 
people  in  the  world  to-day  than  ever  before ;  though  I 
cannot  stay  to  trace  the  renascence  of  spirituality  from 
the  century  I  have  named.  It  is  largely  due,  in  this 
country  at  least,  to  the  Evangelical  movement,  to  the 
romantic  or  Tractarian  movement,  and  to  the  idealist 
movement  in  philosophy,  as  these  are  represented  by 
Low  Church,  High,  and  Broad. 

But  after  this  admission  I  also  venture  to  repeat  that 
Christianity  means  much  more  than  spiritual  appetite  or 
sympathy.  Personal  faith  means  much  more  than  ideal 
religion  or  romantic.  These  pieties  are  too  subjective,  and 
they  do  not  contain  that  which  makes  Christianity  Chris- 
tian. The  thing  that  marks  Christianity  is  the  objective  gift 
of  God  in  Jesus  Christ.  What  is  the  nature  of  that  gift  ? 
The  difference  between  Catholicism  and  Protestantism  is 
a  very  deep  and  real  one,  but  it  does  not  turn  upon  greater 
or  less  spirituality.  It  is  hard  to  say  on  which  side  of 
the  line  you  find  more  of  that.  They  differ  upon  totally 
different  conceptions  of  the  gift  of  God  in  Christ.  Both 
Rome  and  Reformation  start  from  the  supernatural  gift 
in  Christ,  as  every  Church  must  do,  else  it  does  not 
remain  a  Church.  No  Church  is  possible  on  a  basis  of 
religion  ;  it  must  be  a  basis  of  salvation.  Both  Churches 
knew  that  Christianity  must  be  something  more  than 
religious  sensibility,  ideal  aspiration,  beautiful  prayers, 
the  great  general  truths  of  our  spiritual  nature,  or  even  a 
passion    for  the  Kingdom  of  God.     Both    knew  that  a 


I.J  Lay  Religion  23 

Church  and  a  faith  could  rest  only  on  a  positive  revelation 
and  not  a  subjective  inspiration.  They  parted  when 
they  came  to  describe  the  revelation,  the  gift,  the  way 
by  which  the  Kingdom  must  come.  That  was  also  what 
parted  Jesus  and  Judaism.  Both  of  these  lived  for  the 
Kingdom.  It  was  their  life  passion.  But  they  were  a 
world  apart  in  the  way  they  believed  it  must  come  ;  and 
the  difference  was  fatal. 

And  to  measure  truly  the  Christianity  of  an  age  we 
must  ask  how  far  it  grasps  God's  true  gift,  and  not  how 
eagerly  or  finely  it  seeks  it.  What  is  its  conception  of 
salvation  ?  What  is  it  that  makes  it  religious  ?  What 
is  the  object  of  its  religion  ?  Do  not  ask,  What  is  its 
dream  ?  or,  What  is  its  programme  or  its  piety  ?  but, 
What  is  its  Gospel  ?  Do  not  ask,  What  is  its  experience  ? 
Ask  what  emerges  in  its  experience  ?  It  is  not  the  lack  of 
religiosity  that  ails  the  Church,  it  is  the  lack  of  a  Gospel 
and  a  faith,  the  lack  of  a  spiritual  authority  and  a 
response  to  it. 

For  the  leaders  of  the  Reformation  the  gift  was  not  an 
institution,  nor  was  it  vaguely  a  Christian  spirit,  but  the 
Holy  Spirit  as  personal  life.  It  was  direct  personal 
communion  with  a  gracious  and  saving  God  in  Jesus 
Christ.  It  was  direct  obedience  to  his  authority. 
What  they  presented  to  us  was  a  Kingdom  finally 
won  in  Christ,  and  not  one  yet  to  be  won  by  any 
faith  or  work  of  ours.  It  was  what  they  called  "the 
finished  work,"  and  what  is  now  called  the  absoluteness 
or  the  finality  of  Christ.  And  it  is  here  that,  for  the 
hour,  the  Church  is  their  inferior.  It  has  fallen  from 
their  evangelical  height.  The  world  has  gone  forward 
in  its  religion,  but  the  Church  has  gone  back  in  its  faith. 
Unhappily,  the  thing  in  which  the  world  has  gone  forward 


24  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

is  of  less  value  than  the  thing  in  which  the  Church  has 
gone  back.  Religion  is  secondary,  but  positive  faith  is 
primary.  We  have  more  religion  than  ever  before — some- 
times more  than  we  know  what  to  do  with ;  do  we  find 
more  faith  on  the  earth  ?  We  have  more  sensibility  and 
more  seeking,  but  have  we  more  strength,  footing,  and 
command,  in  proportion  ?  Have  we  the  old  heroes'  grasp 
of  the  sure  and  unspeakable  gift  ?  Have  we  their  experi- 
ence of  it  ?  Have  we  our  fathers'  experience  of  it  ?  Is 
it  as  hard  as  it  should  be  for  us  to  be  patient  with  those 
who  deny  and  destroy  it  ?  Our  religion  understands 
better  some  aspects  of  the  Father ;  does  it  understand 
the  only  guarantee  of  His  fatherhood — the  Redeemer  ? 
The  spread  of  religion  has  cost  us  the  depth  of  it.  Its 
modern  charm  has  cost  us  its  power.  We  have  vivid 
religious  interests,  but  no  decisive  experiences.  We  have 
fine  sympathies,  but  not  a  more  fearless  conscience  ;  a 
warmer  ethic,  but  a  poorer  courage ;  eloquence  about 
morals,  silence  about  holiness ;  much  about  criticism, 
little  sense  of  judgment.  The  religious  crowd  has  little 
discernment  of  the  spirit  of  its  prophets.  Our  religion 
has  more  moral  objects,  but  less  moral  interior.  It  wrestles 
with  many  problems  between  man  and  man,  class  and 
class,  nation  and  nation ;  but  it  does  not  face  the  moral 
problem  between  the  guilty  soul  and  God.  It  pursues  a 
high  righteousness  of  its  own,  but  it  is  too  alien  to  the 
righteousness  which  is  of  God  by  faith.  It  dwells  upon 
a  growing  moral  adjustment,  it  does  not  centre  on  a 
foregone  and  final  moral  judgment  in  which  God  has 
come  for  our  eternal  salvation.  In  a  word,  as  I  have  said, 
we  are  more  concerned  with  man's  religion  than  with 
God's  salvation.  We  compare  and  classify  religions 
more  than  we  grasp  the  massiveness  of  grace.     And  we 


I.]  Lay  Religion  25 

are  more  tender  with  the  green  shoots  of  the  natural 
soul  than  we  are  passionate  about  the  mighty  fruits  of 
the  supernatural  Spirit. 

But  all  this  means  that  a  rich  soil  is  forming  for  the 
great  new  word  when  it  pleases  God  to  send  its  Apostle. 
Only  let  us  be  sure  that  when  he  comes  he  will  be  an 
Apostle  and  not  a  Saviour,  a  preacher  of  the  change- 
less word  to  the  changed  hour,  and  not  a  new  Christ  to 
make  good  something  lacking  in  the  old. 

Our  first  business  with  the  Gospel  is  to  understand  it. 
And  our  first  business  with  the  spiritual  situation  is  to 
understand  that.  Let  us  go  on  to  try  to  do  both,  to 
grasp  the  salvation  of  God  in  the  religion  of  man.  And 
here  there  is  great  hope.  The  critical  challenge  to  Faith 
is  drawing  out  the  resources  cf  faith. 

§         §         § 

An  ultra-liberalism  in  a  historic  religion  like  Chris- 
tianity has  always  this  danger — that  it  advance  so  far 
from  its  base  as  to  be  cut  off  from  supplies,  and 
spiritually  starved  into  surrender  to  the  world.  If  it  is 
not  then  exterminated  it  is  interne  i  in  a  region  ruled 
entirely  by  the  laws  of  the  foreign  country.  Gradually 
it  accommodates  itself  to  the  new  population,  and  is 
slowly  absorbed  so  as  to  forget  the  first  principles  of 
Christ.  It  comes  to  live  in  a  religious  syncretism  which 
is  too  much  at  home  with  the  natural  man  to  bear  the 
marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus.  This  is  what  happened  to 
most  of  the  Jews  in  the  Exile. 

But  there  a  remnant  remained,  gathered  the  closer 
round  the  living  word  of  the  Lord,  which  is  so  exotic 
in  the  world  and  yet  so  charged  with  the  true  promise 
and  life  of  the  world's  future.     And  this  is  also  the  effect 


26  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

of  the  ultra-liberalism    of  which    I    speak.      It  elicits  a 
positive  reaction  which  rallies  the  Israel  of  faith. 

When  we  use  the  word  reaction,  let  us  note  its  two 
meanings.  It  may  mean,  passively,  mere  stampede.  Or 
it  may  mean  reacting  positively  ;  as  a  chemical  reagent 
does,  in  the  way  of  repelling  the  effect  of  something  else, 
and  even  mastering  it.  It  is  often  said  that  the  effect  of 
the  reds  and  ultras  of  undogmatic  religion  is  reaction  in 
the  passive  sense  of  retreat,  in  the  negative  sense  of 
merely  throwing  people  back  in  panic  to  repristinate  a 
stage  which  is  really  long  outgrown.  But  what  really 
happens  with  those  who  grasp  the  whole  situation  is  not 
reaction  in  the  sense  of  flight  to  cover ;  it  is  the 
deploying  of  reserves.  It  is  a  deeper  evolution,  under 
stress  and  crisis,  of  the  resources  latent  in  vital  faith. 
It  is  a  development,  adjusted  to  the  new  situation,  of 
wealth  previously  unrealized  within  our  evangelical 
religion.  Our  depths  are  shaken  to  the  top.  We 
discover  and  work  a  gold-mine  on  our  hereditary  estate. 
The  hidden  riches  of  our  secret  power  are  brought  to 
light.  A  new  sense  dawns  on  us  of  the  depth,  sweep, 
and  solemnity  of  the  trust  God  gave  us  in  His  Son. 
And  we  wake  to  feel  anew,  about  the  Gospel  in  which 
we  slumbered,  that  God  is  in  this  place  and  we  knew 
it  not. 

The  heresy  that  creates  the  stampede  is  incompetent 
heresy.  When  the  one  thing  comes  lightly  the  other  as 
lightly  goes.  But  the  beneficent  function  of  competent 
heresy  is  to  correct,  nay,  it  is  still  more  to  elicit,  to 
discover  the  higher  truth  to  itself,  and  to  enhance  the 
Church's  sense  of  power,  even  when  the  time  is  not  ripe 
for  scientific  adjustment. 

There  is  another  effect — one  of  sifting  and   sobering 


I.]  Lay  Religion  27 

within  the  Church  itself.  Every  crisis  has  th?j  judging, 
separating,  selective,  steadying  effect.  It  makes  clearer 
and  sharper  the  line  between  the  real  possessors  of  an 
evangelical,  living,  saving  faith,  and  those  who  are  merely 
spiritual.     It  clarifies.     And  it  brings  to  their  feet  some  y 

who  may  have  been  but  dabbling  with  belief  and  toying         / 
with  negation.  ^. 

When  we  write  off  entirely  the  worldly  people  who 
care  for  none  of  these  things,  and  the  light  people  who 
trifle  with  them,  the  real  strife  appears  to  be  what  it  was 
in  the  first  century  of  Christianity  in  the  issue  between 
Jew  and  Christian.  It  becomes  the  issue  between  the 
men  of  religion  and  the  men  of  faith  ;  between  those  who 
reverence  and  those  who  worship  Christ ;  between  those 
who  beatify  Him  and  those  who  deify  Him;  between 
those  who  honour  Him,  with  a  certain  discrimination 
and  reserve,  and  those  who  trust  their  whole  soul  and 
world  to  him  for  ever  and  ever ;  between  those  who 
treat  Him  with  admiration  or  even  affection,  and  those 
who  give  him  faith — which  (I  have  said)  is  a  thing  which 
can  be  given  to  no  created  being,  even  were  he  created 
before  the  worlds,  but  to  God  alone.  It  is  an  issue 
between  those  who  regard  him  as  the  greatest  contribu- 
tion ever  made  to  the  human  soul,  and  those  who  view 
Him  as  the  one  consummation  and  satisfaction  of  the 
holy  will  of  God.  We  are  driven  to  a  vital  choice,  within 
Christianity  itself,  between  an  ego-centric  and  a  theo- 
centric  religion.  It  is  not  clear  enough  when  we  talk 
about  a  Christo-centric  Christianity.  Even  with  Christ 
in  the  centre  we  must  go  on  to  ask  a  question  which 
divides  Christianity  into  two  streams,  one  of  which  ends 
in  the  eternal  kingdom  of  holy  God,  and  the  other  in  the 
brief  sovereignty  of  spiritual  man.    We  have  to  ask,  in  the 


28  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

Gospel's  interest,  whether  Christ  is  central  to  a  glorified 
Humanity  or  to  a  glorious  God  ;  whether  man's  chief 
end  is  to  develop,  by  Christ's  aid,  the  innate  spiritual 
resource  of  a  splendid  race,  or  to  let  the  development 
flow  from  its  reconciliation,  redemption,  and  subjection 
to  God's  holy  will  by  Him.  What  we  are  developing  at 
the  moment  is  an  anthropo-centric  Christianity.  God  and 
Christ  are  practically  treated  as  but  the  means  to  an  end 
that  is  nearer  to  our  enthusiasm  than  anything  else — the 
consummation  and  perfecting  of  Humanity,  The  chief 
value  of  religion  becomes  then  not  its  value  to  God,  but 
its  value  for  the  completing  and  crowning  of  life,  whether 
the  great  life  of  the  race  or  the  personal  life  of  the 
individual.  Love  Christ,  we  are  urged,  if  you  would 
draw  out  all  that  is  in  you  to  be.  Our  eye  is  kept  first 
upon  our  self-culture,  our  sanctification,  in  some  form, 
by  realising  a  divine  presence  or  indwelling,  with  but  a 
secondary  reference  to  the  divine  purpose.  God  waits 
on  man  more  than  man  waits  on  God.  God  is  drawn 
into  the  circle  of  our  spiritual  interests,  the  interests 
of  man's  spiritual  culture,  as  its  mightiest  ally  and 
helper.  We  have  many  kinds  of  effort — some  genial, 
some  ascetic — for  the  development  and  deepening  of  the 
soul's  life,  in  some  of  which  the  spiritual  man  is  thought 
to  be  a  stage  higher  than  the  Gospel  man.  Whereas, 
if  we  forgot  our  spiritual  life  after  a  wise  and  godly 
sort  and  lived  more  to  God,  His  finished  Gospel,  and 
that  purpose  of  a  kingdom  for  which  Christ  died,  He 
would  take  better  care  of  our  spiritual  life  than  all  our 
forced  culture  of  it.  In  a  subtle  way  this  tendency  is 
less  Christo-centric  than  ego-centric.  It  is  monastic. 
It  is  not  theo-centric.  For  in  any  theo-centric  faith 
man   lives  for  the  worship   and  glory    of  God  and  for 


I.]  Lay  Religion  29 

obedience  to  His  revelation  of  Himself;  which  is  not  in 

man,  and  not  in  spirituality,  but  in  Christ,  in  the  historic, 

superhistoric,   Christ.     Christ  is   not    the    revelation  of 

man,   but  of    God's   will    for    man ;    not    of    the    God 

always  in  us,   but  of  the  God  once  and  for  all  for  us. 

\  Christ    did    not  come  in  the    first    instance   to    satisfy 

the   needs   and   instincts    of    our    diviner    self,    but  to 

honour  the  claim  of  a  holy  God  upon  us,  crush  our  guilt 

into  repentant  faith,  and  create  us  anew  in  the  act.     He 

did  not  come  in  the  first  instance  to  consecrate  human 

nature,  but  to  hallow  God's   name   in  it.     He  came  to 

fulfil  God's  will  in  the   first  place,  and  to  fulfil  human 

destiny  only  in  the  second  place  and  by  consequence. 

These  two  streams  may  not  seem  far  apart  in  their 
origin,  but  they  part  widely  as  they  flow  on.  And  one 
makes  glad  the  City  of  God  and  His  Kingdom,  and  the 
other  is  lost  at  length  in  the  desert.  The  latter  makes 
Christ  and  Christianity  to  culminate  and  be  exhausted 
in  the  service  of  man,  the  former  makes  their  first  work 
always  to  be  the  honour  and  worship  of  God.  In  that 
worship  man  grows  to  all  his  destiny,  and  warms,  and 
even  melts,  in  perpetual  brotherly  love  and  service. 
The  one  makes  the  centre  of  Christianity  to  be  the 
ideal  or  spirit  of  Christ,  the  other  the  Cross  of 
Christ.  One  makes  the  Cross  the  apotheosis  of 
sacrifice  with  a  main  effect  on  man,  the  other  makes  it 
the  Atonement  with  its  first  effect  on  God.  The  result 
of  the  latter  is  a  Church  ;  of  the  former,  a  social  State 
more  or  less  spiritualised,  and  more  or  less  fleeting. 
The  latter  postulates  the  deity  of  Christ,  the  other  but 
his  relative  divinity. 

The  Godhead  of  Christ  is  a  faith  that  grows  out  of 
that  saved  experience  in  the  Cross  which  is  not  only  the 


30  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jems  Christ  [lect. 

mark  but  the    being  of  a  church  ;    so   that  undogmatic 
Christianity  is    foreign,  false,  and    fatal  to  any   church. 
J>The  deity  of  Christ  is  the  necessary  expression  of  such  a 
church's    sense  of   what  God  has    done  for   the  soul  in 
Christ.     It  is  the  theological  expression  of  the  experience 
which  makes  Christianity  the  experience  that  when  we 
commit    ourselves    in    faith    to    Christ  we   enter    actual 
communion  with  God.     God    is  in  us    and  we    in    God 
when  we  are  in  Christ,  when  we  are  what  Christ  makes 
us  to  be.     It  is  upon  this  experience  that  the    Church 
is  thrown  back  in  every  challenge  or  crisis.     With  all  its 
might   the  Christian  Church    repudiates   the    Unitarian 
position  of  Wernle,  that  "  there   is    much    Christianity 
without  faith  in  Christ."     Christian  men  are  thus  made  to 
ask  if  they  really  have  Christ  in  such  a  way  as  to  have 
God  in  Him  and  Him  alone.     They  are  made  to  examine 
their  personal  faith  and  that  of  their  Church.    They  are  led 
to  ask  if  Christ  has  not  been  ceasing  to  be  the  sacrament 
on  earth  of  God's  real  presence,  and  becoming  but  the 
prophet  or  saint  of  a  God  remote,  however  immanent. 
They  are  roused  to  put  such  questions  as  these :  Would 
it  make  a  real  difference  to  me  if  Christ  were  not  God,  if 
in  Christ  God  were  not  in  His  world  uniquely  and  once 
and  for  all  ?     Can  the  old  faith  live  on  its  new  phase  ? 
Can  we  sustain  the  old  worship  ?     Can  we  keep  near  to 
a  God  who  is  only  near  to  us  in  an  immanent  sense  ? 
Can  a  Christ  who  only  ministers  to  the  world  by  giving 
it  fresh  hope  and  confidence  in  itself,  cure  the  awful  and 
growing  egoism  of  the  world,  or  only  sublimate  it  ?     Can 
our  souls  find  rest  in  a  Christ  who  only  says,  "  Come 
unto  Me,  and  behold  what  you  may  be  if  you  are  true 
to  your  best  self,  and  true  to  a  divine  Humanity,  as  I 
am  ?  "     Such  questions  are  forced  on  us  by  the  hour  ;  and 


I.]  Lay  Religion  31 

we  are  driven,  by  God's  grace,  to  repair  a  slackness  that 
was  coming  upon  our  communion  with  Christ,  a  shallow- 
ness too  easily  exploited  by  the  plausible  ;  and  we  are 
moved  to  reduce  a  distance  that  was  growing  between 
us,  and  that  failed  to  alarm  us  because  we  dreamily  took 
our  sympathy  with  Him  for  our  faith  in  Him. 


LECTURE    II 

THE    RELIGION    OF    JESUS    AND    THE 
GOSPEL    OF    CHRIST 


LECTURE    II 

THE    RELIGION    OF   JESUS   AND    THE   GOSPEL   OF   CHRIST 

There  is  nothing  we  are  more  often  told  by  those 
who  discard  an  evangelical  faith  than  this — that  we  must 
now  do  what  scholarship  has  only  just  enabled  us  to  do 
and  return  to  the  religion  of  Jesus.  We  are  bidden  to  go 
back  to  practise  Jesus's  own  personal  religion,  as  distinct 
from  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  from  a  gospel  which  calls  him 
its  faith's  object,  and  not  its  subject,  founder,  or  classic 
only.  We  must  learn  to  believe  not  in  Christ,  but  with 
Christ,  we  are  told. 

But  the  innovator  has  always  the  burden  of  proof; 
and  the  first  question  we  must  ask  our  adviser  here 
is,  what  is  meant  by  the  religion  of  Jesus  ?  Have  you 
in  view  his  popular  doctrine  or  his  personal  piety  ? 
Was  it  the  religion  he  presented  in  his  vocation,  or 
that  which  he  cherished  in  his  most  private  soul  ?  Do 
you  mean  that  our  religion  should  lie  in  following  his 
popular  teaching,  or  should  it  lie  in  reproducing  his  own 
personal  faith  ?  F^or  the  word  religion  is  somewhat 
ambiguous.  If  you  mean  the  doctrine  he  taught  us,  then 
you  treat  him  as  no  more  than  a  prophet  of  the  most  high 
and  earnest  kind.  But  he  was  more  than  teacher  and 
preacher.     He  was  a  personality.     However   lofty  that 

35 


30  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

treatment  of  Jesus  as  a  prophet  may  be,  it  is,  on  the  whole, 
a  lower  spiritual  level  than  is  taken  when  we  view  him  as 
a  saint,  whose  grand  legacy  is  his  inner  self,  with  its  per- 
sonal and  intimate  faith  lying  behind  the  greatest  things  he 
said  to  such  audience  as  he  had.      It  is  otherwise  with  us. 
All  the  great  Christian  teachers  impress  us  with  the  fact 
that   their   teaching   is  far   ahead    of    their   experience, 
and  that  they  built  better  than  they  knew.     Even  Paul 
preached  a  Gospel  greater  than  anything  he  attained  in 
his  own  soul.     He  was  apprehended  of  what  he  could  but 
imperfectly  apprehend.     Whereas  our  impression   from 
Christ  is  just  the  converse.     His  personal  experience  is 
far  greater  than  anything  he  said  or  could  say   to   his 
public.     All  he  said  rose,  indeed,  from  his  own  experience  ; 
for  he  was  no  lecturer.     But  also  it  is  all  less  than    his 
experience.     He  received  from  none  the  Gospel  he  spoke. 
He  found  it  in  himself.     Indeed  it  was  himself.     He  only 
preached  the  true  relation  between  God  and  man  because 
he  incarnated  it,  and  because  he  established  it.     But,  as 
we  have  his  teaching,  it  is  only  a  partial  transcript  of 
himself,  of  his  whole  self  as  the  Cross  and  its  Apostles 
revealed  him.     And  therefore  you  cannot  treat  him  as 
teacher  alone.      You  cannot  do  so  even  if  you  take  his 
teaching  itself.    The  doctrine  carries  you  beyond  a  doctor. 
He  was  a  part  of  his  own  Gospel.    He  could  teach  nothing 
without  indirectly  teaching  himself.      This  is    so,  apart 
from  the  fact  that  He  did  directly  declare   himself  to  be 
our  Judge,  Redeemer  and  King,  the  sole  determiner  of  our 
relation  to  God  ?    So  that  the  religion  taught  by  Jesus, 
brings  us  face  to  face  with  his  soul  who  taught  it,  as  him- 
self more  momentous  for  our  destiny  than  anything   he 
taught.     Jesus  the  saint,  even  if  he  go  no  higher,  is  more 
for  us  than  Jesus  the  prophet. 


ii.J      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ       37 

We  are  thus  carried  within  the  doctrine  to  the  saint, 
from  the  public  message  to  the  private  faith.  We  have 
to  copy  that  faith,  it  is  said,  even  more  than  we  have  to 
accept  and  obey  those  teachings,  and  the  change  repre- 
sents the  great  difference  between  the  old  rationalism 
and  the  new. 

But  here,  again,  great  difficulties  arise.  If  by  the 
religion  of  Jesus,  which  we  are  to  reproduce  in  our 
degree,  is  meant  his  most  private  and  intimate  relation 
with  the  Father,  two  things  must  be  said. 

(i).     We  have  few  data. 

(2).     And  the  data  that  we  have  put  it  beyond  us. 

(i).  We  have  few  data.  We  have  no  information 
whatever  about  the  form  taken  by  the  communion  of 
Father  and  Son.  How  far  it  was  what  we  call  a  revela- 
tion from  soul  to  soul,  or  how  far  it  was  the  thrill  along  the 
line,  as  it  were  of  a  common  being — how  far  it  was  a  God- 
consciousness  and  how  far  a  self-consciousness  of  God — we 
are  not  informed.  It  was  the  secret  of  Jesus  alone. 
And  he  kept  it.  Not  by  breaking  that  reserve  must  his 
religion  act  on  men.  His  innermost  experience  was 
certainly  engaged  in  our  service,  but  the  steps  of  the 
process  are  inaccessible  to  us.  It  is  a  mystery  what  took 
place  on  the  nightly  mountain  tops,  in  the  far  interior  of 
his  soul,  where  his  strength  was  perpetually  renewed,  his 
vision  cleared,  and  his  decisions  made.  The  religion  of 
Jesus  in  that  sense  was  absolutely  his  own.  What  he 
was  for  God  it  was  not  for  man  intimately  to  know.  We 
are  blessed  in  what  he  did. 

(2).  And  this  is  farther  clear  from  the  data  we  have. 
Especially  from  such  a  passage  as  Mat.  11,  27.  "  No 
man  knoweth  the  son  but  the  father,  neither  knowcth 
any  man  the  father  but  the  son,  and  he  to  whom  the  sou 

£ 


38  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [r,ECT. 

wills  to  reveal  Him."  This  alone  puts  our  faith,  our 
sonship  through  Jesus,  on  a  quite  different  footing  from 
his,  which  was  through  none.  The  data  we  hive  put 
the  personal  religion  of  Jesus  beyond  us,  except  in  so  far 
as  he  might  reveal  it.  And  the  only  form  in  which  he 
revealed  it  was  in  the  exercise  of  his  public  vocation. 
He  had  esoterics,  perhaps,  but  no  confidants — not  even  in 
Gethsemane,  where  we  have  but  a  corner  of  the  veil  lifted  ; 
and  that  not  in  a  confidence,  but  in  a  soliloquy  indifferent 
about  being  understood.  Some  even  think  the  passage 
in  Matthew  xi.  27  a  soliloquy  rather  than  an  instruction. 
His  inmost  experience  was  not  a  thing  transferable  in 
itself.  In  so  far  as  Fatherhood  should  come  to  us  at  all  it 
could  only  come  by  appropriating  the  Son,  and  not  by  cul- 
tivating Sonship,  not  by  repeating  the  Son's  experience. 
For  he  could  not  be  repeated.  "  Me  ye  have  not  always." 
Such  was  the  nature  of  the  revelation  he  had  from  God — 
that  it  could  only  be  man's  according  as  man  was  in  him — 
not  directly,  as  his  own  knowledge  was,  but  only  through 
him.  No  one  was  for  Jesus  with  the  Father  what  he  must 
be  for  all,  he  had  a  relation  with  God,  he  had  dealings  with 
God,  which  were  not  a  part  of  his  vocation  with  men, 
but  the  ground  of  it,  and  its  condition — ^just  as  we,  his 
preachers,  have  dealings  with  him  which  are  no  part  of 
our  service  of  his  church,  and  must  not  be  flung  before 
our  public. 

§         §         § 
It  has  been  lightly  said  that  there  is  no  sin  against  God 

but  the  sin  we  commit  against  our  brother  ;  which  seems 

to  imply  that  for  the  soul  there  is  no  relation  with  God, 

and  no  practical  duty  owed  Him  by  the  soul  and  refused, 

except  that  of  the  love  or  service  of  man.     It  is  surely 

forgotten  what  is  the  first  table  of  the  Christian  Law. 


n.]      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  oj  Christ      39 

"Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart, 
and  soul,  and  will,  and  mind."  That  is  the  greatest 
of  acts.  And  the  love  of  our  neighbour  is  but  the 
second  thing.  Have  there  been  no  cases  where  God  was 
defrauded  of  his  first  claim  on  man,  while  the  second  was 
even  more  than  met  ?  Have  there  been  no  men — are 
there  none — who  have  loved,  served,  and  helped  man  with 
the  devotion  of  a  lifetime,  while  they  never  were  fired  or 
lost  in  love  of  God,  and  never  gathered  strength  from 
reposing  in  a  complete  trust  in  Him,  and  leaving  men  in 
His  hands  ?  Is  our  first  duty  to  humanity  not  to  commit 
it  to  God  ?  Are  there  none  to-day,  blameless  in  all  the 
service  of  their  kind,  for  whom  there  can  be  waiting 
nothing  but  condemnation  in  respect  of  the  love  and 
communion  they  denied  to  a  God  Who  sought  that  above 
all  else,  and  Who  had  the  first  right  to  both  trust  and 
worship  ? 

There  is  a  devotion  to  God,  and  to  God  in  Christ, 
which  calls  lor  the  spikenard  of  our  secret  souls  at  the 
cost  even  of  some  oblivion  of  the  obvious  poor.  And  to 
refuse  that  claim,  if  the  claim  be  good,  is  surely  no  light 
sin ;  for  it  defrauds  God  of  the  first  of  His  rights  over 
us,  and  of  our  response  to  His  personal  and  private  love. 
There  is  a  life  within  the  life  of  service,  and  within  the 
fellowship  of  humanity,  which  is  in  the  long  run  the 
condition  of  all  the  best  human  service  and  the  most 
patient  human  pity.  Without  it  the  enthusiasm  of 
humanity  dies.  Christianity  becomes  a  fine  and  fading 
Positivism  ;  and  Positivism  is  unable  to  bear  the  strain 
of  the  world's  grief  and  guilt.  The  fierce  impatience  of 
many  who  love  men  not  wisely  but  too  well,  because  they 
love  them  more  than  God,  is  proof  how  little  the  soul  can 
be  stayed  upon  public  service,  or  its  spiritual  ritual 
exhausted  in  bencticeuce. 


40  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

So  also  within  the  soul  of  Jesus  at  its  centre,  and 
throughout  his  whole  life,  there  was  an  obedience  and  a 
communion  which  was  a  charge  on  him,  and  a  joy,  prior 
to  all  the  blessing  he  shed  on  men.  His  first  and  inmost 
relation  was  to  his  Holy  Father  whose  name  he  had  to 
hallow  before  all  else.  That  holiness  in  its  love  was  his 
supreme  revelation.  So  much  so  that  the  one  and  only 
thing  he  could  do  at  last,  even  for  the  men  who  refused 
him,  was  the  hallowing  of  that  name,  and  the  perfect 
honouring  and  atoning  of  that  supreme  sanctity  in  his 
steadfast  experience  even  unto  death.  Nothing  he  did  on 
man  could  do  so  much  for  man  at  last  as  his  hallowing  and 
satisfying,  as  man,  of  God's  holy  soul. 

But  about  that  whole  region  Christ  was  almost  entirely 
silent.  We  have  it  but  indirectly.  He  only  said  as  much 
as  lets  us  know  it  was  there,  and  supremely  there.  And 
it  is  so  easy,  therefore,  for  those  who  come  to  these 
records  with  but  the  critical  or  the  humanitarian  tact,  to 
miss  it ;  and  to  declare  with  great  plausibility  that  it  was 
not  there,  and  was  only  imported  by  apostles  who  fixed 
it  upon  their  master  in  a  way  that,  had  he  lived,  he  would 
have  lived  to  repel.  The  secret  of  the  Father  was 
with  the  Son  alone.  No  man  knew  why  the  Father 
had  chosen  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  And  Jesus  believed 
in  his  sonship  for  reasons  entirely  between  his  Father 
and  himself,  for  reasons  quite  past  us.  We  believe 
in  the  Father  because  of  Christ  ;  why  he  believed 
in  the  Father  he  has  not  told  us.  We  are  here  at 
an  ultimate.  We  may  gauge  the  meaning  of  his 
public  Messiahship  as  we  can  never  pierce  the  sonship 
that  underlay  that  expression  of  it.  For  that  sonship 
there  was  an  inner  condition  in  his  nature,  a  native  and 
unique  unity  with  God,  which  all  Christology  is  but  an 


II.]      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      41 

imperfect  attempt  to  pierce.  He  knew  the  Father's  love, 
and  he  was  himself  pure  love,  without  the  alienation, 
the  self-will,  the  sin,  that  not  only  removes  us  far  from  God 
but  severs  us.  For  the  peculiar  revelation  of  his  Father's 
iawe  there  was  in  Christ  a  peculiar  being.  But  two  things 
here  are  greatly  dark.  We  cannot  trace  either  the  steps 
by  which  the  Son  became  incarnate,  or  those  by  which 
Jesus  arrived  at  the  consciousness  of  his  unique  sonship, 
and  reached  that  perfect  certainty  and  clarity  of  it  which 
shines  in  all  he  said  or  did.  Neither  history  nor 
psychology  gives  us  the  means  of  sounding  such  mys- 
teries. The  analogy  of  our  own  religious  experience 
fails  us  here;  and  scientific  inquiry  is  arrested  for  want 
of  objective  material.  But  when  we  consider  what  he  is 
to  our  practical  faith  ;  when  we  reflect  on  his  Church's 
experience  of  him,  and  feel  how  far  it  is  beyond  either 
our  analogy  or  our  induction  ;  when  we  remember,  indeed, 
how  far  faith  is  from  having  a  parallel  in  any  other  expe- 
rience or  process  of  the  soul  whatever ;  we  are  driven  to 
conclude  that  that  sense  of  himself,  as  one  who  could  be 
neither  paralleled  or  repeated,  had  a  superhuman  foun- 
dation. The  last  roots  of  his  unique  experience  lay  in  a 
nature  as  unique;  from  which  it  grew  in  an  organic  way, 
with  the  kind  of  free  necessity  which  belongs  to  that 
spiritual  region  of  things. 

§         §  § 

Let  us  observe  what  is  the  effect  of  the  most  recent  views 
about  the  origin  of  Christianity  upon  this  point,  upon  the 
plea  that  the  first  form  of  Christianity  was  the  so-called 
religion  of  Jesus.  I  refer  to  the  new  religious-historical 
school  of  Germany.  At  the  present  hour  it  is  not  the 
evolution  of  the  biologists  or  the  anthropologists  that 
need  give  us  much  concern.     Any  fear  once  entertained 


42  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

of  these  is  now  outgrown.  Our  real  concern  begins  when 
the  evolutionary  principle  is  carried  into  the  history  of 
religion  ;  when  it  is  made  to  organise  the  new  knowledge 
drawn  from  psychology  and  comparative  religion,  and 
to  organise  it  with  the  same  confidence  with  which,  in 
the  levels  of  biology,  the  new  knowledge  was  once 
organised  into  an  evolutionary  doctrine  declared  to 
be  the  world's  explanation  come  at  last.  Religion, 
it  is  now  said,  is  evolution  which  has  reached  spiritual 
pitch.  The  various  religions  represent  various  stages 
in  the  ascent.  Each  religion  is  the  best  for  the  social 
stage  it  covers.  No  religion  is  final.  And  so,  with 
the  end  of  any  absolute  or  final  religion,  there  is  an  end  of 
much  that  troubles  the  world,  for  instance  of  Missions  at 
least.  For  Christian  Missions  cannot  live  upon  improving 
the  heathen,  but  only  on  passing  them  from  death  to  life. 
But  the  crisis  is  concentrated  when  we  come  to  the 
religions  that  surrounded  Israel,  and  especially  Christ. 
They  really  supplied,  it  is  said,  those  ideal  elements  that 
have  done  most  to  make  Christianity  so  powerful  in  his- 
tory. There  is,  of  course,  it  is  said,  no  denying  the  historic 
reality  of  some  prophetic  Christ,  of  great  ethical  and  spi- 
ritual power.  But  the  Christ  of  Paul,  of  the  New  Testament 
generally,  the  Christ  of  the  first  ages  of  the  Church,  the 
incarnate,  the  atoning,  the  judging,  the  redeeming,  the 
adored,  the  glorified  Christ,  the  Christ  of  the  Apostles, 
the  Sacraments,  and  the  Church  is  described  as  a  syn- 
'"*-  ^  crgtjsjiL  He  is  not  the  inner  Christ  revealed  but  a 
-  ■a/«.  compounded  Christ  put  forward.  He  is  a  splendid  column 
of  spray  sent  up  by  the  collision  of  east  and  west,  of 
Judaism  and  the  farther  East,  of  prophetism  and 
gnosticism.  It  is  impossible  to  believe.  Relativism  will 
not  allow  us  to  believe,  that  "  the  Holy  God  was  a  con- 


II. J      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      43 

temporary  of  Augustus."     The  deification  of  a  Roman 
Emperor   or  the  worship  of  the  Buddha   is  to  religious 
psychology  intelHgible  enough.     We  rate  such  things  at 
their   proper   anthropological   value.      And    in    the  like 
valuation  we   must   now  include  the  worship  of  Christ. 
There  was  a  certain  psychological  necessity  in  it — men 
being  what  they  are — but  no  theological   reality.     The 
dream  of  a  Christ  was  afloat  on  the  age  in  various  forms. 
Spiritual  history  had  been  conceived  by  fantastic  oriental 
mysticisms  as  a  redemptive  drama.     Gnostic  notions  of 
strange  and  heavenly  beings  created  a  whole  ascending  and 
descending  hierarchy   of  occult   redemptive    influences. 
These  more  or  less  naturalistic  dreams  and  longings  were 
drawn  to  Judaism  for  a  stay,  with  its  supernatural  genius 
and  its  ethical  salvation.     And  they  found  a  fruitful  point 
of  attachment  for  the  great  aeon   in  Jesus  with  his  ethic, 
his  healing,  his  love,  his  obedience,  his  religious  insight, 
his  spiritual  genius,  his  powerful  personality.    And  so  we 
explain  the  rise  of  a  whole  religion  of  man's  mediated 
union  with  the  heavenly  being;  but  so,  also,  we  find  such 
a  creed  impossible  as  a  revelation,  however  explicable  by 
the  laws  of  historic  development  in  the  spiritual  region 
of  man's  nature.     Israel's  national  spirituality  was  hypo- 
statised   into  a  Christ  decorated  by  pagan  idealism  with 
cosmic  powers.    For  it  is  quite  impossible,  it  is  said,  from 
the  meagre  relics  about  Jesus  left  us  by  criticism,  to  con- 
struct the  kind  of  Christ  that  grew  out  of  Jesus,  without 
importations  from  other  sources.       Thus  Christianity  is 
really  a  religion  of  general  spiritual  truths,  developed  by 
man  in  aspiration,  and  not  of  special  facts  willed  by  God 
in  revelation.    It  need  hardly  be  said  that  such  an  explana- 
tion of  Christianity  is  entirely  fatal  to  its  survival,  except 
as  an  old  phase  of  religious  development  which  has  its 


44  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

uses   still,   and   as  a    fine    but  passing  product   of  the 
spiritual  genius  of  the  race  now  essentially  outgrown. 

§  §  § 
We  shall,  however,  leave  for  the  present  the  discussion 
of  these  theories  in  order  to  exhibit  their  bearing  on  the 
matter  we  have  in  hand — the  first  form  of  Christianity 
to  which  we  have  access.  There  is  one  great  service 
which  this  religious-historical  school  has  rendered.  It 
has  destroyed  the  fiction  of  the  igth  century  that  there 
was  ever  a  time  in  the  earliest  history  of  the  Church 
when  it  cultivated  the  religion  of  Jesus  as  distinct  from 
the  Gospel  of  Christ.  The  school,  of  course,  may  believe 
itself  able  to  insulate  that  religion  of  Jesus  and  cultivate  it, 
to  disengage  it  from  the  Gospels  by  a  critical  process,  and 
preach  it  to  a  world  pining  for  a  simple  creed  rescued 
from  the  Apostles.  That  is  another  matter  which  I  do 
not  here  discuss.  But  it  is  a  great  thing  to  have  it 
settled  that,  as  far  as  the  face  value  of  our  record  goes, 
and  apart  from  elaborate  critical  constructions  of 
them,  such  imitation  of  the  faith  of  Jesus  never  existed 
in  the  very  first  Church ;  but  that,  as  far  back  as 
we  can  go,  we  find  only  the  belief  and  worship  of  a 
risen,  redeeming,  and  glorified  Christ,  whom  they  could 
wholly  trust  but  only  very  poorly  imitate;  and  in  his 
relation  to  God  could  not  imitate  at  all.  It  does  not  of 
course  follow  that  the  first  Church  was  right  in  this 
respect.  That  is  not  the  point  at  present.  They  might 
have  been  doing  Jesus  an  injustice  in  regarding  him  as 
they  did.  They  might  have  been,  the  Apostles  in  particular 
might  have  been,  so  misled  by  contact  with  him,  that  their 
mystical  enthusiasm  could  not  be  quite  fair  to  his  more 
modest  claims.  They  might  have  been  superstitious 
hero-worshippers.       They     might,    through    their    very 


II.]       The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      45 

proximity  to  Christ,  be  in  a  state  of  faith  as  inchoate 
and  plastic  as  their  theology ;  it  would  run  into  any 
mould  their  environment  might  supply;  and  they  might 
be  the  victims  of  a  religious  crudeness  from  which  we  can 
only  escape  now,  at  this  remote  but  enlightened  distance 
of  time.  They  may  have  been,  without  knowing  it,  the 
prey  of  beliefs  and  longings  which  were  floating  in  the 
air  of  the  age  ;  beliefs  which,  to  their  poor  eyes,  seemed 
to  radiate  from  the  master,  but  which  were  really  only 
settling  down  on  him,  covering  and  clouding  him.  And 
it  may  be  that  only  now,  by  the  methods  of  critical 
science,  we  are  in  a  position  to  tell  them  that  they  were 
quite  wrong  about  all  that  marked  him  off  from  the 
holiest  prophet,  and  about  all  that  went  to  make  the 
Christian  Church  and  its  experience.  That  may  all  be 
so.  But  it  is  not  the  point  for  the  moment ;  which  is, 
that  this  school  has  made  it  impossible  now  to  say  that 
the  earliest  Church  had  a  view  of  Christ  far  more  simple 
and  more  religious  than  any  which  makes  him  the 
Eternal  Son  of  God,  and  the  centre  of  the  world's  drama 
of  redemption.  We  can  no  longer  say  that  its  faith  was 
a  faith  in  God  like  that  of  Jesus,  and  not  a  faith  in 
Christ  as  true  God.  That  plea  may,  perhaps,  be  con- 
sidered to  be  silenced.  We  may  for  ourselves  edit  the 
faith  of  the  first  Church  in  that  interest  of  a  simple  piety, 
but  we  cannot  now  say  that  the  faith  so  edited  (and 
emptied)  was  that  of  the  first  Church.  It  is  recognised 
that  what  we  may  call  Pauline  Christianity  was  the 
faith  of  the  first  Church  we  know  anything  about,  and 
even  of  the  Evangelists.  All  which  helps  to  clear  the 
ground. 

§         §         § 
If  we  were   to  go   to  criticism  of  the  position  of  tiiis 


46  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

school  we  should  have  to  point  out  that  the  theological 
features  it  rejects  were  in  Christian  faith  before  it  be- 
came acted  on  by  influences  definitely  gnostic  ;  that  the 
oriental  Gnosis  in  question  did  not  begin  to  affect  the 
Church,  so  far  as  we  know,  till  the  second  or  third 
generation ;  by  which  time  its  faith  in  Jesus  as  Messiah 
and  Lord,  Redeemer  and  glorified,  sacrifice  and  Saviour, 
was  well  secured — as  indeed  there  never  was  a  time 
when  it  was  not  secured,  after  the  grand  recuperation  of 
Easter  and  Pentecost.  It  is  not  as  if  the  apostolic 
construction  of  Jesus  was  a  thing  of  slow  growth, 
gathering  in  the  outside  influences  of  Judaic  theology, 
and  gradually  changing  Jesus  into  Christ.  For  it  has 
often  been  remarked  that  one  of  the  chief  evidences  of 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus  was  the  otherwise  quite  inex- 
plicable change  which  lifted  the  company  of  disciples 
from  despair  to  a  faith,  hope,  and  joy  the  most  trium- 
phant and  permanent  in  history.  It  is  only  turning  the 
same  fact  to  another  angle  to  say  that  the  suddenness  of 
the  Church's  faith  in  an  atoning,  redeeming,  glorified, 
eternal  Christ  is  quite  unintelligible  unless  there  was  that 
in  Jesus  which  made  it  inevitable  as  soon  as  the  whole 
range  of  his  work  was  finished,  and  the  total  scope  of 
his  person  realised.  It  is  not  credible  that  the  disciples 
of  Jesus  should  have  changed  to  apostles  of  Christ  without 
the  Resurrection ;  nor  can  it  be  believed  that  despair  should 
have  turned  to  joyful  worship  had  they  not, by  the  new  light, 
discovered  something  in  the  Jesus  they  knew  which 
could  be  confessed  in  no  other  way  than  by  worshipping 
him  as  the  God  they  had  been  brought  up  to  know ; 
which  there  is  no  doubt  from  the  New  Testament  they 
did. 

§         §         § 


II.]      7' he  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      47 

There  is  another  thing.  The  Gnostic  systems  which 
are  regarded  as  providing  the  theological  material  of  a 
supernatural  Christ  had  this  common  feature.  Their 
spiritual  universe  was  an  elaborate  provision  for  an 
absentee  God.  Their  object  was  to  secure  the  supreme 
God  as  far  as  possible  from  contact  with  the  world,  or 
even  proximity  to  it,  by  providing  hosts  of  intermediary 
aeons,  emanations,  and  the  like.  That  was  the  genius  of 
their  systems,  among  whatever  variations  in  detail.  I 
confess  that  in  these  systems,  so  far  as  I  know  anything 
about  them,  I  find  much  that  is  attractive,  much  that  is 
more  congenial  to  the  modern  and  idealist  mind  than 
the  somewhat  stiff  mentality  of  the  Apostolic  Fathers, 
or  the  Christianised  philosophy  of  the  Apologists  with 
their  logism.  The  Gnostics  had  what  these  had  not. 
They  had  Geist.  They  had  spiritual  imagination  and 
subtlety.  And  it  strikes  a  more  modern,  spiritual,  and 
universal  note  than  all  the  pagan  philosophy  which  was 
discovered  by  the  Apologists  to  underlie  the  Gospel  of 
Christ.  The  Gnostics  were  really  obsessed  with  the  idea 
of  Redemption — which  always  tends  to  vanish  when  it  is 
the  chief  business  of  the  Church  to  produce  political 
apologists,  or  to  commend  itself  to  the  State  or  the 
public  by  showing  how  long  men  have  been  Christians 
without  knowing  it,  and  how  much  more  deeply 
Christian  they  have  been  and  are  than  they  feel.  There 
is  much  in  the  old  Gnosticism  which  comes  home  to  the 
weary  Titan  of  the  modern  mind.  But  one  thing  there 
is  which  does  not  appeal  to  us  of  these  Christian  days. 
And  it  is  a  thing  that  we  should  have  expected  to  find 
repelling  us  in  the  New  Testament  if  its  theology  had 
been  constructed  under  gnostic  influences.  I  mean  that 
gnostic  effort  to  keep  the  divinest  in  the  divine  as  far  as 


48  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ         [i.ect, 

possible  from  real  contact  with  the  world,  while  his  agent 
at   several  removes  fills   the  foreground.     We    find  the 
tendency  even  in   pre-Christian  Judaism    with  its  hosts 
of  angels.     But  it  is  just  the  opposite  that  we  discover  in 
the  New  Testament,   and  especially  in  its  Pauline  and 
Johannine  parts.     Its   Christ  does  not  come  between  us 
and  God,  either  as  prophet,  teacher,  or  saint.     He  brings 
God.     God   is  in   him.     He  does  not  darken   deity,  or 
push  deity  away.     Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  crimes 
of  some  later  theologians  in  that  way,  it  cannot  be  said 
that  the  total  effect  either  of  the  New  Testament  or  its 
Christ  has   been   to  banish  God  from  humanity.     Quite 
the  other  way.     The  immanence  of  judgment  in  life  (to 
take    no    more   than    that),    the    moral    continuity   and 
sequacity  of  life  here  and  hereafter,  the  award  for  deeds 
done    in    the    body — the    Church's    insistence    on    these 
things     has     neutralised    the     effect    of   a    heaven     or 
hell  which   it  made  too  remote,    and  has  kept  God  in 
man's    life.       The   central    object    of    the    systems    said 
to    be    syncretised    into     Christian   theology    has    been 
not     only     ignored,     but    defeated     by      New      Testa- 
ment   Christianity.      God    is   brought    near    both    theo- 
logically and  experimentally.     And  He  has  been  brought 
near   to   all.     Christ    did  not  enable  certain    promising 
classes  of  men,   by  escaping  from  their  first  gross  and 
hylic  condition,  to  rise  to  the  supreme  God  and  his  far 
country.      But  this  high  God  was  in  Christ,  not  creating 
Christ,  and  not  emitting  Christ  at  some  removes,  but 
present  in  Him,  acting  and  suffering  in  him,  reconciling 
the  world,  making   men   sons  only  in  this  His  son,  and 
giving  them  an  intimacy  of  communion  as  far  from  their 
old   alienation  at   the  one  end    as  from   mere  fusion  of 
being  at  the  other. 


1 1.  J      The  Reltgio7i  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      49 

And  if  it  be  said  that  Gnosticism  was  so  modified  and 
made  innocuous  by  passing  through  the  best  Judaism  on 
its  way  to  Jesus  as  to  produce  this  change,  one  asks 
whether  any  syncretism  with  the  effect  of  a  distinctive 
religion  could  possibly  take  place  between  the  work  of 
Jesus,  viewed  as  the  lofty  ethical  imperative  of  his  grand 
individualism,  and  the  myth  of  redemption  as  Gnosticism 
presents  it. 

§         §         § 

Much  that  is  of  permanent  value  has  been  done  by  the 
religious-historical  school.  Criticism  is  our  triend  and 
not  our  enemy  in  its  place.  It  is  a  good  servant  but  a 
deadly  master.  It  becomes  our  enemy  only  when  it 
aspires  from  being  an  organ  of  Evangelical  faith  to  be  its 
controller.  Now  as  of  old  the  Church  has  to  listen  to 
the  thought,  the  science,  that  grew  up  in  it  and  around  it ; 
but  it  has  to  accept  or  reject  it  not  according  to  its 
rational  value,  but  according  to  its  compatibility  with 
the  central  life  and  experience  of  redemption  which  makes 
the  Church.  The  school  I  name  takes,  indeed,  too  much 
on  itself  when  it  dissolves  into  syncretistic  myth  the 
version  of  Christ  that  has  made  the  Church,  and  goes 
behind  even  the  Jesus  of  the  Gospels  to  reduce  him  to 
the  limits  of  a  spiritualised  rationalism.  If  the  extreme 
critics  are  right  with  the  Jesus  they  construct  scientifi- 
cally from  the  records,  then  we  know  the  real  Jesus 
rather  in  spite  of  the  New  Testament  than  by  it.  But 
all  the  same  they  have  done  much  fine  and  new  work. 
They  have  greatly  vivified  the  New  Testament.  They 
have  helped  to  clear  up  some  of  the  relations  between 
Paul  or  John  and  the  Gnostic  influences  these  apostles 
had  to  deal  with.  They  have  made  it  more  clear  than 
before    that    influences    which    could    not  create  Christ 


50  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

yet  prepared  for  him  and  formed  a  calculus  to  express 
him ;  that  he  gave  voice  to  much  that  was  tongue- 
tied  in  the  aspiring  world,  and  revealed  the  thoughts 
of  many  hearts  ;  that  he  came  in  a  fulness  of  time  to 
be  the  key  of  a  world  of  which  he  was  not  the  product, 
and  to  answer  questions  which  if  he  do  not  answer  he 
only  aggravates.  For  it  should  be  more  clear  than  it 
is  to  many  that  by  his  fate  he  does  aggravate  the  problem 
of  life   if  he   do   not   answer   it. 

But  we  should  not  avoid  the  real  issue  raised  by 
the  school — Did  the  New  Testament  faith,  the  apostolic 
faith,  in  Christ  make  Christianity,  or  was  it  made  by 
Christianity  ?  For  the  answer  represents  two  distinct 
religions.  The  evolution,  the  relativism,  that  makes  us 
to  outgrow  the  New  Testament  Christ  will  also  carry 
us  beyond  the  religion  of  Jesus,  and  the  cult  of  Fatherhood. 
Christianity  itself  will  become  but  a  stage,  even  on  its  ethical 
side.  Its  Fatherhood  of  God  will  be  merely  a  spiritual  idea 
of  great  but  passing  value.  The  Father  will  come  to  appear 
but  a  shimmering,  fleeting,  and  perhaps  credulous  symbol 
of  an  unknown  Hinterland  capable  of  we  know  not  what. 
It  will  be  a  symbol,  also,  not  unmixed  with  an  alloy  of  illusion 
for  practical  purposes.  And  as  these  purposes  are  effec" 
ted  in  the  moral  march  of  man  out  of  old  Judea,  and  as 
the  illusion  can  be  safely  dropped,  the  idea  may  pass  into 
another  idea  which  supersedes  it ;  but  an  idea  which  may 
also  round  upon  it,  and  destroy  it,  as  it,  in  its  day,  de- 
stroyed the  passionate  gods  of  the  pagan  pantheon.  The 
Father  God  may  go  the  way  of  the  despot  God  when  the 
paternal  conception  has  worked  out  its  happy  moral 
effect ;  and  it  may  yield  its  place  to  the  monistic  substi- 
tute which  moves  altogether  if  it  move  at  all ;  which 
moves    to    pessimism,     racial  suicide,   and    finally     the 


II. J      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ     51 

suicide  of  God  ;  and  which  meaning  to  move  on  the 
whole  to  righteousness,  moves  only  to  whatever  righteous- 
ness may  be  made  to  mean  in  the  absence  of  an  abso- 
lutely righteous  and  Holy  One  who  has  given  a  revelation 
of  Himself  as  final  as  the  problem  is  universal. 

§  §  § 
To  imitate  the  religion  of  Jesus  is  to  cultivate  an  order 
of  piety  absolutely  different  from  the  entire  tradition  of 
the  Christendom  created  by  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  a 
tradition  which  became  most  explicit  in  evangelical 
Protestantism.  And  though  tradition  may  have  less 
weight  in  systematic  theology,  (which  is  a  branch  of 
science,  and  so  far  progressive  in  its  nature,)  in  the 
region  of  piety  we  are  in  the  most  conservative  part 
of  us,  where  tradition  means  and  ought  to  mean  most. 
In  any  faith  the  type  of  its  religion  is  far  more  stable 
and  continuous  than  its  dogmatic  form.  And  a  real  and 
great  reformation  is  so  much  more  than  a  reconstruction 
according  as  it  affects  this  type.  It  is  much  easier  to  change 
a  whole  theology  than  to  change  the  type  of  a  religion,  to 
change  faith  where  it  appeals  to  the  most  permanent 
elements  of  the  soul.  Now  in  the  great  Lutheran 
Reformation,  which  changed  the  religious  type  much 
more  than  the  theological  or  even  ecclesiastical,  there 
was  one  thing  that  was  not  changed  but  only  deepened, 
and  that  was  the  necessity  of  repentance  for  a  truly 
Christian  faith.  It  was  on  the  matter  of  sin,  repentance, 
confession  and  absolution  that  the  whole  Reformation 
movement  turned.  And  its  effect  was  to  lay  a  stress 
unprecedented  upon  what  had  always  been  a  central 
affair  of  Christianity — a  religion  of  repentance  and  for- 
giveness. Roman,  Greek  and  Protestant  Christianity 
are    here     at    one.       And     the    declaration    now    that 


ja  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

Christianity  consists  in  imitating  at  a  reverent  distance 
the  reh'gion  of  Jesus  only  shows  that  we  are  in  the 
midst  of  a  movement  and  an  apostacy  more  serious 
than  anything  that  has  occurred  in  the  Church's  history 
since  Gnosticism  was  overcome. 

For  if  the  religion  of  Jesus  means  the  state  of  his  own 
consciousness  there  is  there  no  trace  of  repentance,  how- 
ever far  we  go  back  in  pursuit  of  his  experience.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  we  take  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  he  was  upon 
this  matter  of  repentance  most  insistent.  Without 
it  all  must  perish.  Was  he,  then,  practising  one 
type  and  prescribing  another  ?  Can  it  be  doubted  ? 
But  if  he  prescribed  a  repentance  he  never 
felt,  and  could  not  feel,  then  he  was  destroying 
in  advance  any  suggestion  that  our  religion  was  his  own 
at  several  removes.  He  was  destroying  the  idea  that 
ours  could  be  a  filial  and  uplooking  piety  as  free  of 
repentance  as  his  own.  He  was  setting  up  for  us  a  type 
different  from  his  own,  though  one  which  was  made 
possible  for  us  by  his  own  alone.  And  the  whole  faith  of 
the  Church  has  recognised  the  deep  and  vital  distinction. 
Has  there  ever  been  an  influential  man  in  the  Catholic 
Church  who  could  say  that  his  type  of  religion  has 
more  in  common  with  that  of  Christ  than  with  that  of 
Peter,  Paul  and  John  ? 

The  tendency  to  ignore  this  distinction,  and  to  make 
classic  for  Christians  a  type  of  faith  in  which  sin  is 
converted  into  immaturity  or  ignorance,  and  repentance 
becomes  but  regret — that  tendency  is  at  the  root  of  all 
that  does  most  to  weaken  and  secularise  the  Churches 
to-day ;  and  its  exponents  are  moral  reactionaries. 
They  teach  a  paganism  which,  however  refined  in  them, 
will  not   remain  refined  for  long  in  those  they  persuade. 


II.]      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      53 

Faith  is  ceasing  among  many  of  the  rehgious  to  be  peni- 
tential faith ;  and  this  is  a  lack  that  no  mere  spirituality 
can  fill.  It  is  a  mere  sympathetic  faith,  or  a  faith  of  heroics, 
like  Peter's  ignorant  boast  that  he  would  never  desert 
his  Master.  And  it  will  have  Peter's  end.  No  mere 
faith  in  a  Master  can  ensure  that  we  shall  not  betray  him 
under  sufficient  pressure.  "Though  all  men  forsake 
Thee  yet  will  not  I."  "I  know  not  the  man."  The 
boast  was  sincere  enough,  sympathetic  and  shallow 
enough.  From  a  platform  it  would  have  swept  the 
house.  But  Christ  knew  men.  His  deepest  insight  was 
into  religious  sophistication.  And  he  put  the  avowal  by 
him.  He  weighed  it  at  its  true  worth.  Then  came  the 
days  of  horror  and  humiliation,  when  Peter  lay  in  a 
deeper  grave  than  Christ.  That  is  the  kind  of  humilia- 
tion that  is  being  prepared  for  a  slight  and  facile  faith. 
And  the  only  hope  for  us  then  is  in  the  Resurrection 
light  upon  the  Cross.  Our  only  hope  is  not  simply  in  a 
deepened  spirituality  chastened  by  error.  A  chastened 
piety  is  not  the  Christian  faith,  else  Martineau  were  its 
great  modern  prophet.  Our  only  hope  is  to  be  rooted  in 
repentance,  grounded  in  forgiveness,  established  in  a 
redemption,  and  quickened  in  a  real  regeneration.  It 
is  that  we  may  be  "  regenerated  to  a  living  hope  by  the 
Resurrection  of  Christ  from  the  dead  "  (i  Peter  i.  3). 
I  have  used  these  words  not  as  a  mere  quotation,  but 
because  they  are  Peter's  own  account  of  his  experience 
of  what  made  him  a  Christian  for  good.  It  was  the 
word  of  the  risen  Saviour  "  Tell  my  disciples  and  Peter'' 
that  raised  him  from  the  lying  and  perdition  of  those 
awful  days  to  a  life  he  never  lost.  It  was  this  that 
translated  him  into  a  confession  deeper  than  that  of  his 
sin,    that    that    same    Jesus  he   had   crucified   was  both 

F 


54  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

Messiah  and  God  (Acts  ii.  36).  It  was  no  remembrance 
of  Christ's  teaching  and  no  emulation  of  Christ's 
religion  that  brought  that  to  pass. 

Our  talk  of  sin  is  palpably  ceasing  to  be  the  talk  of 
broken  and  contrite  men.  It  has  no  note  of  humilia- 
tion in  it.  Our  pious  heart  does  not  meditate  terror. 
We  are  not  frightened  at  ourselves.  We  have  a  softness, 
but  not  the  sacred  tenderness  that  comes  from  that 
humiliation  alone.  It  has  not  the  patience,  the  love  of 
the  brotherhood,  the  passion  to  serve  the  Church  instead 
of  correcting  and  scourging  it,  which  come  over  the 
hearts  of  men  taken  from  the  jaws  of  death,  nay 
raised  from  its  abyss.  Our  speech  of  sin  has  not  behind 
it  the  note  of  "  my  sin,  my  sin  !  "  And  in  consequence 
our  thought  and  speech  of  Christ  loses  the  authentic 
note  of  "  My  Lord  and  My  God."  We  do  not  know  an 
"eternal  sin"  and  an  awful  Redemption,  and  therefore 
we  do  not  know  an  Eternal  Redeemer  in  the  Christ  we 
praise.  That  Redeemer  must  prevail ;  but  his  Kingdom 
and  its  service  may  be  taken  from  us  and  given  to  others. 

§  §  § 
But,  it  is  said,  this  is  the  religion  of  judaised  apostles; 
it  is  not  the  religion  of  the  gospels,  which  knows  repent- 
ance, to  be  sure,  but  does  not  grow  out  of  it  as  a  native 
soil.  Well,  let  us  ask  if  that  be  so.  If  we  turn  to 
the  Synoptics  with  their  reflection  of  the  apostles' religion 
(which  is  the  only  religion  we  can  copy)  what  do  we 
find  the  type  to  be  ?  It  is  a  continuous  confession  of  the 
sinless  Christ  by  sinful  men.  Like  all  the  deepest  con- 
fession of  Christ,  it  is  a  confession  not  of  religion  but  of 
sin  and  salvation.  Everything  these  narratives  say  is  to 
glorify  such  a  Christ  ;  and  they  miss  no  chance  of  con- 
fessing the  stupidity  and  the  wickedness  of  the  men  who 


II.]      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      55 

wrote  them  (or  who  were  at  the  writer's  ear),  stupidity 
and  wickedness  not  only  continued  up  to  the  very  end, 
but  contributing  to  the  crisis  and  the  catastrophe.  These 
gospels  form  an  apostohc  confession  of  unfaith  to  all 
time.  They  confess  their  Lord  in  a  form  which,  like  the 
epistles  also,  is  a  confession  of  faith  carrying  an  unspar- 
ing confession  of  sin.  The  apostles  always  denounce  sin 
in  the  spirit  of  confessors  of  it — which  is  a  very  safe  rule 
for  denunciators.  It  is  the  confession  of  men  to  whom 
their  sin  and  its  forgiveness  by  Christ  was  so  serious  and 
central  that  it  was  a  new  creation  and  passage  from  death 
to  life.  It  is  the  confession  of  men  so  centrally  changed 
by  this  forgiveness  that,  while  their  sin  is  blacker  than 
ever,  they  can  write  of  it  almost  as  if  it  were  not  theirs ; 
so  thoroughly  are  they  severed  from  it  by  their  new 
Creator.  To  see  in  the  apostolic  expressions  about  the 
meaning  of  Christ's  death  nothing  but  dogma,  and  no 
tremendous  witnesses  of  an  unutterable  new  life — are  we 
harsh  if  we  say  that  that  is  a  confession  of  spiritual 
trance,  if  not  decadence. 

At  least  it  is  no  wonder  that  such  eyes  should  fail  to  see  ^ 
in  the  Saviour  the  Incarnate  God.  For  it  is  only  on  the 
experience  of  a  Redeemer  from  eternal  death  into  eternal 
life  that  the  New  Testament  witness  of  Christ's  Godhead 
rests.  And  it  is  only  the  same  experience  that  has  pro- 
longed that  witness  in  the  Church.  The  Gospel  of  Jesus 
made  the  "  Religion  of  Jesus"  impossible.  For  it  made 
the  first  Christians  worship  in  the  Holy  One  of  God  the/>- 
very  Holiness  of  God.  And  for  the  religion  of  to-day 
there  is  not  hope  till,  by  grace  or  judgment,  by  repent- 
ance or  calamity,  we  get  over  the  levity  of  modern 
liberalism,  and  restore  repentance  to  the  foundation  of 
our  faith.     No  faith  born  in  true  repentance  could  speak 


56  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

of  our  all  being  "  sons  of  God  "  like  Christ.     Nor  can  we 

hear  without  fear  and  grief  such  words  from  Christian 

men. 

§         §         § 

We  come,  then,  to  our  communion  with  God  not  along 
with  Christ,  and  in  like  fashion  with  Christ,  but  through 
Christ,  and  in  him.  We  do  not  believe  with  him,  or 
by  his  help,  but  in  him.  We  believe  in  Him ;  and  in 
Him  it  is  that  we  have  our  power  to  believe.  He  is 
not  only  faith's  object  but  also  faith's  world.  He 
becomes  our  universe  that  feels,  and  knows,  and 
makes  us  what  we  are.  Deep  as  the  thirst  for  God  lies 
in  the  soul,  nowhere  but  in  Christ  do  we  have  the 
communion  that  stills  it.  The  communion,  I  say,  and 
not  merely  the  union,  the  fusion,  the  co-mingling,  of 
which  the  high  mystic  dreams.  Truly  it  is  a  mystic 
communion.  The  possession  of  God  is  sure  for  every 
age  and  soul  only  in  Jesus  Christ  as  its  living  ground, 
and  not  merely  by  Christ  as  its  historic  medium.  The 
historic  prophet  is  our  Eternal  priest.  All  other  union 
is  partial,  occasional,  not  for  life,  but  for  moods  and 
hours.  To  live  in  the  love  of  God  is,  indeed,  a  passion, 
and  from  time  to  time  an  experience,  perhaps,  of  high 
gifted  souls.  But  only  by  faith  in  Christ  does  it  cease  to 
mark  certain  fitful  seasons  or  favoured  groups,  and 
become  a  public  possession  and  a  constant  life.  It  is 
impossible  to  live  the  religion  of  Jesus,  because  there  are 
not  in  us  the  conditions  there  were  in  Jesus  for  God  to 
reveal  Himself  directly,  completely,  and  finally.  He 
cannot  do  this  mighty  work  because  of  our  unbelief. 
But  the  belief  which  makes  our  sonship  possible  He  gives 
us  in  the  gift  of  Christ  and  Christ's  action  upon  the  soul. 
The  superhistoric  personality  of  Jesus  was  the  only  human 


11.]      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      57 

personality  to  whom  God  could  fully  reveal  himself  as 
the  Holy  and  absolute  Father.  Therefore  that  personality, 
condensed,  realised,  and  pointed  in  his  cross  is  our  only 
way  to  the  final  certainty  of  such  a  Father.  True,  it  is 
not  the  only  thing  that  makes  us  crave  for  a  Father  in 
heaven  ;  nor,  perhaps,  the  only  thing  that  fills  us  at  times 
with  the  great  surmise  and  voluminous  intuition  that  it 
is  so.  For  many  experiences  in  fine  lives  may  raise  us 
to  that  conviction  for  the  time.  But  Christ  crucified  is 
the  only  power  that  makes  it  for  us  a  life-certainty,  a 
new  and  sure  life,  a  new  life-principle,  a  new  creation, 
with  no  more  doubt  and  no  more  denial  for  ever. 
Whatever  clouds  may  dim  the  radiance  of  our  day  from 
time  to  time  there  is  no  night  there.  And  however  the 
flush  of  elation  may  subside,  and  the  sense  of  God's 
nearness  abate,  there  is  no  more  dividing  and  estranging 
sea.  And  why  ?  Because  in  Christ  God  not  only  comes 
near  to  us  but  by  an  eternal  act  makes  us  His  own.  We 
hold  for  ever  only  because  here  we  are  seized  and  held 
by  the  Eternal.  God  has,  by  the  resurrection  of  Christ, 
regenerated  us  into  a  living  hope;  He  has  not  simply 
given  us  a  living  hope  that  we  may  one  day  be 
regenerate  (i  P.  i.  3).  Any  living  hope  we  have  is  the 
action  of  Christ's  resurrection  in  us.  Prophets,  and 
even  men  of  genius,  can  by  their  message  bring  us 
near  to  God,  but  they  cannot  permanently  keep  us  there, 
or  cure  that  rebound  and  reversion  in  which  our  soul 
gravitates  to  earth  and  cleaves  to  the  dust.  Nothing  can, 
till  we  are  quickened  by  that  unique,  living,  and  Eternal 
word  wherein  God  comes  near  to  us  in  very  presence  and 
act,  and  not  in  message  alone.  He  comes  near  and 
makes  us  His  own.  Others  can  impress  us  with 
God;  in    Christ   God  creates  us  anew.     Others  by  their 


58  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

very  purity  may  make  us  doubt  whether  we  have  any 
right  to  approach  a  Holy  God  who  is  only  too  sure  to  us 
for  our  peace ;  but  in  Christ  such  misgivings  are 
submerged  in  the  discovery  that  He  has  taken  the  matter 
out  of  our  hands  into  His  own,  and  Himself  has  come  to  us 
and  made  us  His  for  ever.  And  then  we  not  only  draw  near 
to  God  and  not  only  have  a  new  relation  to  Him,  but 
we  enter  His  communion,  and  share  His  life,  and  are 
marvellously  made  to  partake  of  His  Eternal  Love  to 
His  Eternal  Son.  That  is  done  in  Christ  ;  where  God 
did  not  send  but  came.  Our  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in 
God.  He  is  the  ground,  and  not  only  the  means,  of  our 
salvation.  And  the  ground  of  our  salvation  must  be  the 
object  of  our  faith,  and  of  our  faith  in  God.  The  god- 
head in  a  Redeemer  is  the  only  form  of  godhead  we  can 
bring  to  the  test  of  experience.  Godhead  means  finality  ; 
and  we  can  have  no  real  God  on  the  lines  of  either 
thought  or  power,  because  there  we  can  have  no  finality. 
Finality  is  a  matter  of  life,  of  the  Eternal  Life  given  by 
Christ  alone.  Here  the  newest  philosophy  and  the  oldest 
Christianity  meet. 

For  personal  and  final  union  with  the  Father  and 
His  love  there  is  no  way  for  us  but  that  faith  in  Jesus 
which  his  disciples  found  forced  upon  them  by  the 
compulsion  of  his  grace.  And  the  one  compressed 
channel  by  which  it  came  was  the  cross  and  its 
redemption.  Jesus  was  for  the  Apostles  and  their 
Churches  not  the  consummation  of  a  God-conscious- 
ness, labouring  up  through  creation,  but  the  invasive 
source  of  forgiveness,  new  creation,  and  eternal  life. 
In  Christ  God  did  not  simply  countersign  the  best 
intuitions  of  the  heart  but  He  created  a  new  heart 
within  us.     There  was  for  the  New  Testament  no  way 


II.]      The  Religion  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  Christ      59 

to  the  communion  of  the  Father  but  by  the  forgiveness 
which  was  Christ's  grand  and  comprehensive  gift — 
at  once  redemption  and  eternal  life.  It  was  in 
giving  him  up  unsparingly  to  the  death  that  God  gave 
us  all  things,  all  our  destiny,  all  Eternity.  What, 
it  has  been  asked  in  many  tones  of  late,  what 
is  the  essence  of  Christianity  ?  The  best  known 
answer  that  of  Harnack,  is  too  meagre.  He  is  too  much 
of  a  devout  historian,  and  too  little  of  a  spiritual  thinker. 
The  essence  of  Christianity  is  Jesus  Christ,  the  historic 
Redeemer  and  Lord  and  God,  dwelling  in  his  Church's 
faith.  I  have  already  said  that  there  never  was  a  time, 
even  in  the  Church's  earliest  days,  when  Christianity  was 
but  the  reproduction  of  the  personal  faith  of  Jesus,  or 
the  effort  to  live  his  ethic.  It  was  always  a  faith  in 
Jesus  concentric  with  the  Church's  faith  in  God. 

"The  Christian  religion  begins,"  says  Wobbermin, 
"  historically  viewed  {i.e.  apart  from  faith  and  so  far  as 
documents  carry  us)  it  begins,  not  with  the  religious  self- 
consciousness  of  Jesus  but  with  that  of  the  first  disciples. 
We  can  carry  back  the  line  of  Christian  faith  straight  to 
them,  but  not  beyond  them  to  Jesus  himself.  Beyond 
the  whole  chain  he  stands  as  the  person  who  first  made 
this  form  of  faith  and  life  possible.  And  it  was  not  that 
he  extended  into  his  disciples  his  own  religious  self- 
consciousness.  Not  one  of  them  ever  said  or  thought 
that.  None  came  to  the  Father  but  only  the  Son,  and 
those  to  whom  it  was  the  Son's  will  to  reveal  Him." 

In  the  first  form  in  which  we  know  it  then,  the  religion 
of  Jesus  was  the  religion  of  which  Jesus  was  the  object 
and  not  the  subject.  He  was  never  regarded  as  the  first 
Christian.  If  we  reject  that  objective  faith  in  him,  then, 
we      start    with     something     quite    different    from    the 


6o  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ     [lect.  ii. 

religion  of  our  only  source  of  information,  and  if  we 
start  with  a  Jesus  different  from  that  of  our  New 
Testament  sources,  a  saint  rather  than  a  Redeemer,  we 
are  beginning  with  a  construction,  a  manufactured 
article.  And  not  only  is  a  construction  no  beginning, 
but,  if  it  come  to  construction,  why  must  we  prefer  the 
Jesus  of  critical  or  speculative  construction  to  the  Christ 
of  theological  and  apostolic  construction  ?  Why  prefer  a 
Christ  constructed  from  documents,  without  their 
experience,  to  a  Christ  constructed  from  documents 
whose  experience  we  repeat,  and  which  are  themselves 
a  part  of  the  revelation  {See  Lecture  on  Inspiration).  For 
upon  the  central  things  the  apostolic  documents  are  the 
prolongation  of  the  message  of  Jesus.  They  are  Christ 
himself  interpreting  his  finished  work,  through  men  in 
whom  not  they  lived  but  he  lived  in  them.  Christ  in  the 
Apostles  interpreted  his  finished  work  as  truly  as  in  his 
lifetime  he  interpreted  his  unfinished  work.  In  both  cases 
he  interpreted  it  as  the  hour  shaped  it  and  as  a  growing 
faith  could  bear  it.  Many  things  which  they  were  not 
able  to  bear  during  his  life  he  said,  through  select  lips,  to 
those  in  whom  the  finished  work  had  created  the  soul  of 
insight  and  understanding.  It  is  men  broken  by  his 
cross  and  healed  by  his  Spirit  that  have  the  secret  of 
the  Lord. 


LECTURE     III 

THE    GREATNESS   OF  CHRIST   AND    THE 
INTERPRETATIONS    THEREOF 


LECTURE  III 

THE  GREATNESS  OF  CHRIST  AND  THE  INTERPRETATIONS 

THEREOF 

The  sense  of  the  greatness  of  Christ's  character  and  of 
his  historic  influence  is  higher  to-day  than  ever.  What 
does  that  mean  in  regard  to  his  person  ?  We  may  note 
one  or  two  points  at  the  outset. 

1.  As  to  his  antecedents  in  Israel  and  the  Old  Testa- 
ment it  must  be  admitted  gratefully  to  modern  scholar- 
ship that  Israel  began  by  sharing  with  the  whole  Semitic 
East,  and  the  nearer  East  generally,  the  same  religious 
ideas,  ethics,  and  customs,  allowing  for  their  development 
by  each  nation  on  its  own  lines.  So  far  God  was  work- 
ing in  them  all.  Yet  only  in  one  people,  only  in  Israel, 
did  God  Himself  open  out,  and  reveal  Himself  by  a 
special  and  redeeming  word.  But  this  word  for  this 
people  gradually  revolutionised  all,  renovated  it,  sur- 
mounted it,  and  either  neutralised  a  great  part  of  the 
Oriental  legacy,  or  rejected  it.  So  that  the  difference, 
on  the  whole,  submerges  the  affinities  between  Israel  and 
the  Semitic  East,  between  the  revelation  which  finds  in 
Israel  and  that  which  seeks  in  all  the  rest  of  Humanity. 

2.  So,  also,  when  it  came  to  a  point,  in  regard  to 
Christ.     A  deeper  knowledge  of  the  Judaism  of  Christ's 


64  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

time  forces  on  us  the  conviction  that  there  was  in  his 
mere  thought  or  precept  little  that  was  new  and  original. 
It  can  mostly  be  gathered  from  contemporary  Judaic 
ideas  on  such  subjects  as  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  and 
its  ethic,  God,  Father,  Messiah,  Resurrection,  and  the 
conflict  between  God  and  Satan.  But  the  power  of 
Jesus  still  grows,  both  in  the  way  of  drawing  men,  sub- 
duing them,  and  uniting  them ;  and  no  less  in  the  way  of 
dividing  them,  Where  does  it  lie  ?  It  is  something 
gained  to  recognise  that  it  does  not  lie  in  novel  truth, 
(and  that  heresy,  therefore,  is  not  necessarily  loyalty) ; 
but  that  it  lies  in  the  new  divine  personality,  and  the 
redeeming,  consummating  act  of  God  effected  in  it.  The 
religious  power  of  the  world  is  not  ideas  or  truths, 
powerful  as  these  are,  but  personalities  and  their  deeds. 

3.  And  this  impression  of  Christ's  greatness  is  deepened 
as  we  turn  to  account  the  fine  results  of  recent  scholar- 
ship upon  his  life;  especially  if  we  were  to  follow  those 
who  reduce  his  public  activity  to  a  year.  We  remark 
that  he  entered  on  life  with  anything  but  a  passionless 
simplicity  of  nature ;  yet  it  was  as  a  complete  and 
finished  character,  with  entire  moral  adultness  and 
adequacy  to  each  deepening  situation.  He  was  perfectly 
sure  and  self-sure,  knowing  his  mind  and  carrying  it 
through  with  an  energy  of  will  unparalleled  in  the  history 
of  the  great.  The  concentration  and  unity  of  his 
character  and  purpose  is  the  more  amazing  as  he  had  not 
a  long  life,  like  Goethe's,  in  which  to  work  out  the 
tremendous  contradictions  and  collisions  in  his  vast 
soul.  "  The  spiritual  power  which  broke  up  the  old 
pagan  world  and  founded  a  new  is  here  compressed  into 
a  single  volcanic  point."  What  a  man  !  What  a  maker 
of  men  !     What  a  master  of  men  and  of  events  !     What 


III.]    The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  65 

a  sovereignty  was  the  mien  of  his  self-consciousness  !   Lord 
of  himself  and  all  besides ;  with  an  irresistible  power  to 
force,  and  even  hurry,  events  on  a  world   scale  ;  and  yet 
with  the  soul  that  sat  among  children,  and  the  heart  in 
which  children  sat.     He  had  an  intense  reverence  for  a 
past  that  was  yet  too  small  for  him.     It  rent  him  to  rend 
it ;  and  yet  he  had  to  break  it  up,  to  the  breaking  of  his 
own   heart,  in    the  greatest    revolution    the   world    ever 
saw.     He  was  an  austere   man,   a  severe  critic,  a  born 
fighter,  of  choleric  wrath  and   fiery  scorn,   so  that   the 
people  thought  that  he  was  Elijah  or  the  Baptist;  yet  he 
was   gentle    to    the    last    degree,    especially   with    those 
ignorant  and  out  of  the  way.     In  the   thick    of  life  and 
love  he  yet  stood  detached,  sympathetic  yet  aloof,  cleav- 
ing at  once  both  to  men  and  to  solitude.     He  spoke  with 
such  power  because  he  loved   silence.     With  an  almost 
sacramental  idea  of  human  relations,  especially  the  cen- 
tral relation  of  marriage,  he  yet  avoided  for  himself  every 
bond  of  property,  vocation,  or  family;  and  he  cut   these 
bonds  when  they  stood  between  men  and   himself.     Full 
of  biting  irony  upon   men  he  yet  was  their   healer  and 
Saviour.     Of  a  quick  understanding  which  tore  through 
the  pedantry  of  the  Scribes,  with  a  sure  dialectic  which 
never  failed  him,  and  never  left  him  at  the   mercy  of  his 
hecklers,  he  had  yet  a  naive  nature  and  a  pictorial  speech 
which    brought    him    very  near  to  the  simplest — whom 
next  moment  some  deep  paradox    would  confound,  and 
even  wound.     Clear,   calm,  determined,  and  sure  of  his 
mark,  he  was  next  hour  roused  to  such  impulsive  passion 
as  if  he  were  beside  himself.     But  if  he  let  himself  go  he 
always  knew  where    he  was  going.     With   a  royal,  and 
almost  proud,  sense  of  himself,  he  poured  out   his  soul 
unto  God  and  unto  death,  and  was  the  friend  of  publicans 


66  i  he  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

and  sinners.  With  a  superhuman  sense  of  authority  he 
had  a  superhuman  humiaty.  When  he  emptied  himself 
it  was  done  in  the  fulness  of  God.  He  could  be  bitter, 
and  almost  rough  in  his  virility,  yet  he  could  pity,  obey 
and  sacrifice  like  a  woman.  The  mightiest  of  all  indi- 
vidual powers,  he  has  yet  set  on  foot  the  greatest  Socialism 
and  Fraternity  the  world  has  known,  which  is  still  but 
in  its  dawn.  "  King  and  beggar.  Hero  and  Child, 
Prophet  and  Reformer,  Pblemist  and  Prince  of  Peace, 
Ruler  and  Servant,  Revolutionist  and  Sage,  man  of 
action,  man  of  ideas,  and  man  of  the  Word — he  was  all 
these  strange  things,  and  more,  in  one  person."  * 

And  he  was  all  that  without  being  torn  asunder  as  a 
common  man  would  have  been  ;  for,  if  his  heart  broke, 
his  soul  never  did,  nor  his  will.  He  was  all  that,  in  a 
unity  greater  than  the  unity  of  the  most  uncommon  men, 
a  unity  ruled  by  his  tremendous  will.  Dwell  on  the 
wealth  of  his  person  more  than  its  mystery,  on  his 
irresistibility  rather  than  his  gentleness,  on  his  steadfast 
energy  of  concentration  upon  his  one  work  more  even 
than  his  elemental  force  of  passion  or  his  depth  of  suffer- 
ing— dwell  on  such  things  if  you  would  come  near  the 
centre  and  secret  of  this  personality  and  its  root  in 
coequal  God.  His  effect  on  the  human  soul  is  greater 
than  any  human  cause  can  explain,  whether  you  think  of 
the  extent  of  his  effect  in  history,  or,  still  more,  of  the 
nature  of  his  effect  in  a  Church  and  its  experience. 

§         §         § 
We  may,  perhaps,  put  the  matter  thus.    If  we  say  there 
is  no  limit  to  the  greatness  of  Christ's  personality,  where, 
then,  did  his  limitation  lie? 

*  For  this  sentence,   and   more  in   this  paragraph,   cf.   Weidel,  Jesu 
Personhchkeit,  igo8. 


III.]   The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  67 

It  is  not  relevant  to  point  to  the  limitation  of  his 
knowledge,  the  absence  of  political  or  aesthetic  sympathies, 
or  any  other  result  of  his  being  the  true  son  of  his  age 
and  servant  of  his  special  vocation.  These  things  do 
not  constitute  moral  personality.  They  are  only  some 
of  the  conditions  within  which  moral  personality  may 
reveal  or  approve  itself.  Personality  is  not  limitation, 
nor  the  negation  of  limitation,  but  the  surmounting  of  it. 
Determination  here  is  not  negation,  but  power.  For  it 
is  self-determination.  Christ,  as  the  moral  result  of  his 
life's  humbled  action  in  death  and  resurrection,  was 
determined  as  the  Son  of  God  in  power.  Rom.  i.  4.  The 
personality  is  shown  not  by  the  limitations  but  in  them — 
in  their  conquest  and  exploitation.  In  der  Beschrdnkung 
zeigt  sick  erst  der  Meister.'^Mere  individuality  may  be  defined 
by  limitations,  but  personality  is  expressed  within  them, 
by  transcending,  overflowing,  and  utilising  them.  The 
individual  may  be  a  circle  or  plot  walled  off  from  others,  but 
the  person  is  a  bubbling  spring  among  them  that  overflows 
them.  The  one  is  an  area,  the  other  is  a  centre  of  power 
The  sun  is  not  a  measurable  round  hole  in  the  sky,  but  a 
power-centre  so  active  that  when  we  feel  him  most  we 
cannot  see  his  rim  and  limit,  which  we  yet  know  to  be 
there.  It  is  overflowed  and  irradiated.  The  limitation 
is  lost  in  the  power.  So  with  the  limitations  on  the  glory 
of  Christ.  They  give  it  feature  and  enhance  it.  On 
the  other  hand  we  may  often  observe  that  an  excess  of 
such  powers  as  Christ  lacked  may  go  along  with  great 
poverty  of  moral  power  or  greatness.  Napoleon  was 
one  of  the  greatest  elemental  geniuses  the  world  has  ever 
seen,  yet  under  his  very  shadow  Wordsworth  could  still 
deplore  in  France  the  absence  of  a  "  master  spirit." 
Greatness  of  personality  is  quite  compatible  with  absence 


68  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

of  genius ;  while  consummate  genius  may  go  with  great 
moral  poverty  in  the  personality,  and  a  total  lack  of  per- 
sonal greatness — as  a  case  like  Turner's  shows. 

But  it  will  be  said  that  however  we  magnify  the  great- 
ness of  Christ's  personality  we  yet  cannot  reach  a  Godhead 
for  him.  For  that  is  a  qualitative  difference,  and  we 
cannot  cross  the  bar  of  deity  by  any  mere  expansion  of 
human  greatness.  The  remark  might  be  true  if  by  the 
greatness  of  personality  we  meant  but  its  wide  vision, 
its  elemental  force  or  its  demonic  genius.  But  we  are 
concerned  in  Christ  with  something  much  more  than  the 
area,  the  force,  or  the  velocity  of  a  personality.  As  the 
person  of  Christ  is  much  more  than  his  character,  so  it 
is  also  more  than  his  personality.  He  was  a  personality, 
to  be  sure,  whatever  we  think  of  his  person.  He  was  a 
very  great  personage.  But  he  could  never  have  been  for 
history  what  he  is  had  he  been  but  a  colossal  and  magnetic 
personage.  The  mystery  of  his  person  resides  in  its 
nature  from  the  beginning,  in  its  quality  and  not 
its  amount,  in  its  native  finality  and  not  its  volume 
or  passion.  It  is  in  its  divine  nature  and  moral 
quality  :  in  its  holy  quality  more  than  its  infinite 
compass  ;  in  such  a  way  that  we  say,  if  God  be  not  thus 
He  is  less  than  the  God  we  crave  for  and  the  world  needs, 
the  last  reality  of  soul  and  conscience.  This  is  the  holy 
love  that  deserves  to  be  almighty  and  infinite.  Nay, 
this  is  the  holy  love  that  is  infinite.  For  it  is  a  greatness 
of  love,  not  only  an  intensity  but  an  intrinsic  greatness 
of  love,  a  kind  and  not  a  degree  of  love,  which  shows 
itself  invincible  by  all  the  world  and  all  its  worst.  It  is 
holy,  sacrificing,  saving  love  to  the  uttermost. 

It  is  infinite  love  not  finite,  God's  love  not  man's.  God 
so  loved ;  not  so  intensely  but  so  holily.   God  is  in  Christ, 


III.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  69 

loving  to  the  uttermost  there,  and  not  merely  saying  or 
showing  by  an  agent  that  He  loved.  There  is  a  quali- 
tative difference  from  any  natural  passion  or  affection  in 
the  love  that  loves  the  Holy  with  entire  holiness,  loves 
a  world  in  arms  against  it,  and  loves  it  so  invincibly  as 
to  save,  loves  it  from  death  into  life  eternal.  Love  that 
was  not  overcome  of  such  evil  overcame  evil  as  God — 
overcame  it  absolutely,  finally,  with  the  grace  of  an  infi- 
nite holy  God.  To  extend  what  is  given  us  in  Christ, 
therefore,  is  not  to  pass  into  another  genus  when  we  are 
driven  to  call  him  God. 

§  §  § 
But  granting  the  tremendous  differences,  and  contra- 
dictions even,  between  man  and  God,  it  is  not  impossible 
to  find  in  the  reality  of  a  person  a  union  of  them  which 
is  impossible  in  a  rational  scheme.  And  in  this  respect 
modern,  philosophical  thought  is  totally  different  from 
Hellenic  or  medieval.  It  has  come  to  realise  the  in- 
adequacy of  thought  for  reality.  It  has  therefore  given 
more  room  and  rank  to  faith  as  an  organ  of  knowledge. 
It  has  admitted  that  all  real  knowledge  is  not  scientific 
in  its  form.  Indeed  it  sees  that  science  cannot  give  us 
reality  (but  only  method),  whereas  faith  can.  And  a 
formula  which  logic  might  call  contradictory,  such  as  the 
Godman,  becomes  less  an  absurdity  than  an  indication  of 
adequate  thought  on  the  greatest  matters.  It  is  in  the 
region  of  moral  personality  that  we  find  the  truth  that 
lies  in  credo  quia  absurduui.  Ihe  absolute  claim  of  pure 
and  logical  thought  has  been  reduced.  It  is  not  equal  to 
modern  life — and  especially  to  the  growth  of  the  personal 
idea,  and  the  pricelessness  of  the  soul.  Scholasticism, 
medieval  and  modern,  has  been  dethroned.  No  dogma 
is  adequate    to    spiritual     reality.     Things    have    to    be 

G 


70  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

reckoned  with  as  real  which  are  quite  irrational,  and 
life's  whole  destiny  is  risked  on  them.  Those  who  use 
rationality  as  the  test  of  reality,  however  modernist  they 
may  be,  are  not  yet  out  of  the  medieval  ban  ;  and  when 
they  apply  the  rational  principle  destructively  they  are 
only  the  victims  of  an  inverted  scholasticism.  They  are  the 
dogmatists  of  negation.  And  in  the  end  they  form  a  bitter 
disappointment  to  those  who  once  hoped  to  find  through 
them  an  escape  from  traditional  dognia  into  a  grander 
plerophory  of  truth,  but  who  really  find  only  that  they 
have  exchanged  a  rich  dogma  for  a  lean.  Some  things 
irreducible  to  proof  or  logic,  and  some  vulnerable  to  the 
critic,  are  among  our  mightiest  forces  ;  and  on  the  other 
hand  some  things  logically  irresistible  are  for  life  totally 
inapplicable  and  absurd.  The  greatest  things  we  believe 
we  cannot  comprehend,  not  only  in  religion,  but  in 
practical  life.  Nor  is  it  fatal  if  our  statements  about 
them  are  in  flat  contradiction.  The  greatest  of  realities 
is  the  greatest  of  paradoxes.  This  is  true  even  of  the 
final  quantities  handled  by  science  itself,  like  the  atom ; 
which  is  extended  and  yet  indivisible  for  thought ;  yet  in 
the  paradox  we  have  the  most  fruitful  of  beliefs  for  the 
development  of  modern  physics. 

But  we  can  rise  higher  than  that.  We  have  the  most 
obstinate  of  antinomies,  we  have  the  most  intractable  of 
paradoxes,  when  a  belief  so  essential  to  society,  action, 
and  character  as  human  freedom  and  responsibility  is 
conjoined,  as  it  must  be,  with  its  incompatibles — scientific 
causation  or  divine  grace.  There  is  a  series  of  facts 
explicable  only  on  the  one  line,  and  a  parallel  series, 
inseparable  from  it,  explicable  only  on  the  other.  We 
have  to  accept  both,  and  to  believe  for  our  life  that 
reality  is  too  great  to  be  covered  by  one  of  the  formulae 


III.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Inierpretatioits  thereof  71 

alone,  but  equally  needs  the  other  and  opposite.  We 
can  daily  observe  that  these  two  contradictory  things 
have  their  practical  and  fruitful  union  in  many  a 
character,  which  they  unite  to  sustain,  develop,  and 
adorn  in  the  maze  of  life.  And  we  are  well  aware  that 
human  society  and  history  would  be  impossible  without 
belief  in  both  ;  as  the  government  of  a  free  country  is 
carried  on  only  by  two  irreconcilable  yet  cooperant 
parties. 

Kant  revealed  a  whole  series  of  these  rational  anti- 
monies. And  it  was  thus  that  he  broke  the  reign  of 
dogma;  it  was  by  no  direct  criticism  of  theological  loci. 
For  the  essence  of  authoritative  dogma  is  to  make  faith 
depend  on  rational  consistency  for  its  being;  and  the 
essence  of  negative  dogma  is  to  think  belief  can  be 
destroyed  by  being  shewn  to  be  rationally  inconsistent. 
Beware  of  clearness,  consistency,  and  simplicity,  espe- 
cially about  Christ.  The  higher  we  go  the  more 
polygonal  the  truth  is.  Thesis  and  antithesis  are  both 
true.  But  their  reconciliation  lies,  not  as  Hegel  said, 
with  a  superfined  rationalism,  in  a  higher  truth  which  is 
also  of  the  reason,  but  in  a  supreme  and  absolute 
personality,  in  whom  the  antinomies  work.  lis  marchont. 
It  is  the  category  of  personality  that  adjusts  the  con- 
tradictions of  reason  ;  which,  after  all,  is  not  abstract 
thought  but  a  person  thinking. 

§  §  § 
The  application  to  the  Godhead  of  Christ  may  be 
clear.  God  and  man  seem  to  exclude  each  other  ;  and 
the  difference  certainly  is  very  deep.  But  to  realise 
the  depth  of  the  difference  is  only  the  more  to  realise  the 
greatness  of  Christ  as  theGodman.  Theology  is  peculiarly 
vulnerable  to  the  rationalist,  because  it  is  engrossed  with 


72  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

the  last,  and  therefore  the  most  alogical,  realities.     And 
its   central  doctrine  in    particular  seems    offensive  to  a 
rapacious  logic,  to  a  common  sense  with  an  insatiable 
thirst  for  empire.     But  none  the  less,  as  the  kind  of  great- 
ness grows  on  us  which  exists  in   Christ's  person,    we 
grow  also  to  feel  that  the  categories  of  critical  thought 
which  are  so  useful  below  are  no  more  competent  there 
than   feet   for   the  air.      To   express   this  greatness   we 
need   not    two    truths   lying   in   a    third,  but  two  great 
powers  at  least,  two  personal  movements,  and  these  in  a 
surmounted  collision  within  a  person.    We  need  man  and 
God,  and  we  need   them  in  a  Godman  and  in  a  cross. 
How  inadequate  it  must  be  to  rationalise  as  doctrine,  in 
even  the  most  constructive  way,  a  revelation  which  was 
only  possible  by  the  act  of  the  Son  of  God  in  the  Cross. 
So  true  is  it  that  the  wisdom  of  God  is  folly  with  men, 
and  the  foolishness  of  men   is  God's  wisdom.     Theory 
indeed  we  must  prosecute.    The  effort  to  adjust  the  great 
paradox  could  only  cease  with  the  paralysis  of  thought. 
But  we  shall  theorise  more  successfully  and  modestly  on 
our   living  and  justifying   faith    if  we   realise   that  our 
theories  are  but  "  thrown  out."     They  are  but  projected 
at  the  reality  from  our  experience  of  it ;  they  are  faith 
codifying  itself;  they  are  not  reality,  nor  competent  to 
reality.    After  all  the  centuries  of  toil  upon  this  doctrine, 
even  with  our  kenotic  efforts,  we  sometimes  ask,  have  we 
really  done  what  was  not  done  at  Chalcedon,  where  the 
two  sides  were  stated  against  their  heresies  but  not  ad- 
justed, and  left  lying  parallel  but  not  organised  ?     Only 
some  heresies  were  repudiated  as  being  incompatible  not 
with  logic  so  much  as  with  the  evangelical  experience. 
They  were   repudiated,  but  no  real  solution  could  be  put 
in  their  place.    And  no  theories,  and  no  clash  of  theories. 


III.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  73 

no  mere  truths.or  the  incompatibility  of  truths,  can  destroy 
our  confidence  of  faith  that  the  Christ  who  gave  and 
gives  us  our  redemption  is  the  rock  of  any  reality 
possible  to  life  at  its  deepest,  to  life  as  one  whole,  to  life 
eternal,  and  that  he  is  the  human  presence  of  Eternal 
God.  But  most  of  the  failure  to  recognise  the  divine 
greatness  of  Christ  arises  in  the  end  from  a  moral  failure 
to  appreciate  him  as  personal  saviour ;  and  that  failure 
rises  from  a  defect  in  the  estimate  of  the  sin  from  which  he 
saves.     A  lofty  ideal  is  not  mighty  to  save. 

§         §         § 
For  where  is  the  true  site  of  the  greatness  of  Christ  ? 
Is  it  in  the  mere  force  and  volume  of  the  historic  figure, 
or  in  the  nature  of  his  historic  work  ? 

If  we  take  but  two  features  alone  in  Christ  we  find  our- 
selves before  elements  which  it  is  impossible  to  combine 
in    any   conception  except  that    of  personality   with  its 
alogical  and  inconsistent  unity  ;  and  in  this  case  it  is  a 
personality  great  and  contradictory  beyond  the  mould  of 
any  other.     Unity  of  personality  does  not  always  go  with 
harmony  of  qualities.     Unity  of  purpose  need  not  imply 
aesthetic  symmetry  of  character.      And   the  artists,  and 
aesthetic  Christianity  generally,  have  misled  us  about  the 
harmony  and   balance  of  Christ's  character.     There  is 
something    too    Mendelssohnian    in    their    moral  music, 
something  too  well-groomed  and  habited  in  their  mental 
type,    in     their    carriage    something    too    much    of  the 
Christian  gentleman.     In  Christ   there  are  two  features 
which  are  to  be  unified  in  no  fair  picture  but  only  in  one 
rnighty  person.     The  severity  of  judgment  in  Christ  and 
the  tenderness  of  the  pity   form   a  contradiction  which 
seems  as  final  in  its  own   region  as  the  antinomy  of  the 
divine  sovereignty  and    human    freedom    is    in    another 


74  ^^'^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

plane.  So  much  so  that  between  these  two  elements  some 
can  never  find  themselves  in  Christ,  never  come  to  rest  in 
him,  so  long  as  they  view  him  as  a  teacher,  a  character, 
or  a  personality  alone.  At  one  time  they  are  drawn  to 
his  mercy,  at  another  they  are  crushed  by  his  severity. 
Now  they  run  into  his  shelter,  now  they  are  chilled  in  his 
austere  shadow.  Now  he  is  all  sympathy,  now  all 
judgment.  And  their  whole  life  in  relation  to  him  is  an 
alternation  of  moods,  now  trust,  now  fear — until  the  per- 
sonality is  consummated  for  them,  and  perfectly  expressed 
in  his  "finished  work."  It  is  expressed  and  consummated 
in  no  symmetrical  scheme  or  conception  of  his  character, 
and  in  no  psychological  harmony  of  his  history,  but  in 
the  deed  unspeakable  and  full  of  glory,  in  the  final  act  of 
the  cross,  where  all  is  gathered  in  one  for  our  peace, 
where  the  whole  Jesus  at  last  takes  effect,  with  the  judg- 
ment, indeed,  there,  but  the  grace  uppermost,  as  he  bears 
in  himself  his  own  judgment  on  us.  What  the  cross  is 
for  the  soul  and  the  race  can  be  put  into  no  theology, 
adjusted  in  no  philosophy.  No  thought  or  form  can  con- 
tain the  greatness  of  the  personality  which  it  took  the 
eternal  act  of  cross  and  resurrection  fully  to  express. 

It  is  the  work  of  the  cross  that  crowns  and  carries 
home  the  greatness  of  Christ.  There  the  Master 
becomes  our  Lord  and  our  God.  Impression  there 
becomes  faith.  And  as  faith  can  only  have  God  for  its 
object  it  is  bound  to  pass,  in  the  cultus  at  least,  into  the 
worship  of  Christ ;  and  in  theology  it  passes  into  the 
belief  in  his  real  deity,  however  expressed.  It  cannot  be 
too  often  recalled  that  the  article  of  Christ's  deity  is  the 
theological  expression  of  the  evangelical  experience  of  his 
salvation,  apart  from  which  it  is  little  less  than  absurd, 
and  no  wonder  it  is  incredible. 


III.]   The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  75 

§         §         § 

Some  unity  of  a  Christ  so  great  with  God  is  not  denied 
by  any  with  whom  we  are  here  concerned.  The  problem 
is,  how  we  are  to  construe  it. 

When  Jesus  says,  "  I  and  the  Father  are  one,"  he 
uttered  an  experience  which  the  author  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  cannot  have  merely  imagined.     To  think  he  did  ,  ^  -^ 

IS  pure  Pyrrhonism ;  it  is  not  criticism.  If  anything  is 
sure  to  us  about  the  mind  of  Christ  we  are  sure  that  such 
was  the  relation  he  cherished  and  expressed  towards  his 
Father.  The  only  question  is,  what  did  it  mean  for 
him  ? 

Now,  in  asking  what  was  the  exact  content  of  Christ's 
consciousness  on  such  a  point  we  are  barred  at  the  outset 
not  merely  by  the  meagreness  of  our  data  but  by  a  con- 
sideration still  more  serious.  It  is  a  psychological  im- 
possibility for  us  to  go  very  far  in  reconstituting  the 
consciousness  of  Christ.  To  say  we  can  is  to  beg  the 
question  by  placing  him  on  a  human  and  penetrable  level 
at  the  start.  He  knew  what  was  in  man  and  needed 
no  telling;  but  does  not  his  own  chief  account  of  himself 
say  that  no  man  knoweth  the  Son  but  the  Father  ? 
The  intimate  relationship  between  them  is  not  accessible 
to  us.  We  can  only  say,  with  Lotze,  that  it  is  im- 
possible for  us  to  exaggerate  that  intimacy.  And  the 
most  subtle  speculations  of  the  Church,  when  they  are 
interpreted  with  the  insight  of  a  sympathetic  intelligence 
instead  of  sealed  up  by  the  dulness  of  a  scornful,  are  but 
the  finest  efforts  of  human  thought  to  feel  its  way  into 
that  divinest  mystery. 

But  yet  we  do  not  easily  consent  to  be  entirely  Agnostic 
on  such  a  matter.  Nor  do  we  believe  that  such  entire 
ignorance  is  the  decree  of  Him  who  wills  to  be  inquired 


76  The  Person  and  Plac:  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

of.  And  Christian  effort  to  advance,  to  grow  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God  has  taken  three  historic 
stages,  all  of  which  survive  in  modern  forms.  These  we 
may  describe,  in  ecclesiastical  language,  as  the  Ebionite 
(or  Socinian),  the  Arian,  and  the  Athanasian.  Of  these 
the  Ebionite  or  Socinian  stage  we  may  perhaps  consider 
to  have  been  outgrown  in  principle  as  the  result  of  the 
more  competent  and  sympathetic  attention  given  by 
modern  thought  both  to  the  nature  of  religion  and  to  the 
self-consciousness  of  Jesus.  The  Athanasian  stage,  at 
the  other  end,  is  bound  up  with  the  existence  of  a 
Church,  and  is  alone  compatible  with  that  experience  of 
final  Redemption  in  Christ  which  makes  the  Church- 
The  Arian  stage  is  that  which  still  fascinates  those  who 
have  abandoned  the  lower  extreme  without  having 
reached  the  higher,  and  who,  having  lost  faith,  or  never 
having  had  the  historic  mind,  sit  loose  to  the  Church 
and  its  experience.  It  is  the  conflict  of  Arianism  and 
Athanasianism,  under  modern  conditions,  ideas,  and 
methods,  which  must  engage  the  concern  of  Christian 
people  for  at  least  the  next  generation. 

§  §  § 
I.  The  first  or  Socinian  stage  represents  what  is  true 
enough  if  it  be  not  called  final — the  individual  saintliness 
and  moral  supereminence  of  Christ.  For  it  is  in- 
dividualist. When  he  spoke  of  his  unity  with  the 
Father,  and  said  they  were  one,  he  only  meant  (it  is 
said)  that  they  were  entirely  at  one.  It  was  an  ethical 
unity.  The  one  will  was  tuned  completely  to  his  vis-a- 
vis in  the  other  and  gave  back  his  note.  The  son  of 
man  had  an  insight  into  the  Father's  will  which  was 
only  matched  by  his  absorbing  desire  and  moral  power 
to  do  it.      Father  and  Son   confront  each  other.     The 


jii.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  77 

;dea  is  harmony  or  congruity  rather  than  condignity  ; 
and  the  conception  of  Christ  involved  is  no  more  than 
prophetic.  He  is  our  rehgious  hero,  a  rehgious  genius 
unsurpassed  ;  but  not  '*  My  Lord  and  my  God."  The 
advantage  of  such  a  conception  is,  first,  that,  as  far  as  it 
goes,  it  is  true.  And  second,  that  everyone  who  need 
be  considered  is  agreed  about  it.  If  Christ  was  no  more 
than  moral  hero  and  prophet  of  the  Lord  he  was  that 
at  least.  So  that  if  the  essence  of  Christianity  were  its 
lowest  common  denominator,  if  it  were  (as  it  is  not) 
what  divides  us  least,  we  need  go  no  further  than  this 
position  to  gather  the  greatest  possible  number  into  the 
Christian  pale.  But  the  genius  of  Christianity  is  not 
minimist.  And  the  object  of  Christianity  is  not 
majorities,  not  the  gathering  in  or  as  many  people  as 
possible  in  a  given  time  on  the  simplest  base;  which 
would  be  setting  the  great  pyramid  on  its  moral  apex.  But 
it  is  the  glorifying  of  the  Father,  the  hallowing  of  his 
name;  and  then  the  enfolding  of  as  many  as  seek  first 
such  a  Kingdom  as  the  cross  founded  in  doing  so.  It  is 
peace  among  men  of  such  good-will.  The  Socinian 
position  has  attractions  for  the  lay  stage  or  type  of 
mind,  which  is  religious,  and  rational,  and  nothing 
more.  But  it  abolishes  certain  finite  difficulties  only  to 
create  infinite.  It  places  Christ  as  it  places  all  the 
prophets  whose  series  he  crowns,  among  the  men  to 
whom  God  but  spake,  and  who  could  not  but  obey  that 
word.  And  the  deep  difference,  among  those  who  are 
interested  in  Christ  at  all,  is  that  between  those  who 
call  him  "  Lord  and  God  "  with  his  first  believers,  and 
those  who  call  him  hero  with  his  latest  admirers — 
admirers  who  are  yet  able  to  judge  him  more  search- 
ingly  than  they  were  ever  judged  by  him,  or  expect  to  be. 


78  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

I  cannot  regard  as  other  than  Socinian  the  idea  that 
in  Christ  we  have  the  greatest  of  created  personalities 
completely  filled  with  the  Spirit  of  God.  For  the  centre 
of  gravity  must  always  be  where  the  personality  is ;  and 
in  this  case  it  is  in  the  created  humanity  alone.  The 
person  concerned  is  a  person  in  the  same  created  sense 
as  the  rest  of  us,  however  magnificent  in  his  scale  and 
range,  and  however  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost.  His 
communion  with  God  is  in  principle  the  same  as  ours. 
He  is,  like  the  Church,  the  habitation  of  the  Spirit,  and 
neither  the  giver  of  the  Spirit  nor  his  eternal  correlate.  The 
Lord  is  not  the  Spirit.  Such  a  Christ  does  not  indeed  offer 
to  the  Spirit  the  opposition  presented  by  the  rest  of  us, 
but  that  is  a  matter  of  relative  perfection.  Like  us,  he  is 
a  creature,  only  created  ad  hoc,  for  a  special  function,  and 
as  a  special  organ  of  the  Spirit.  And  he  is  not  even 
created  before  the  world ;  but  he  is  the  classic  instance 
of  created  man.  The  notion  of  Jesus  as  the  grand  and 
perfect  receptacle  of  the  spirit,  its  most  glorious  tenement 
the  most  fine  and  adequate  of  all  its  human  instruments 
in  history,  however  generously  you  construe  that  notion, 
does  not  really  rise  above  the  Socinian  level.  It  is 
certainly  below  the  New  Testament  idea,  whatever 
countenance  it  may  find  in  certain  inchoate  New  Testa- 
ment phrases.  For  we  must  oiten  remark  that  in  the 
New  Testament  we  find  no  complete  theory  or  explicit 
theology  of  either  Trinity  or  Incarnation ;  but  we  have 
the  faith  and  the  principle  which  are  impossible  other- 
wise, and  which,  under  the  heat  of  conflict  and  the 
growth  of  Christian  mind,  revealed  at  last  the  invisible 
writing  on  its  heart  of  a  perfectly  triune  God. 

2.  The  second  or  Arian  stage   is  represented  by  those 
who  see  in  Christ  not  merely  the  perfect  prophet,  but  a 


III.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  79 

personality  unique  in  his  supramundane  nature,  and  not 
merely  in  his  function  and  the  way  he  discharged  it. 
They  do  lay  stress  not  on  his  message  but  on  his  divine 
person,  and  the  position  he  took  toward  men.  They 
recognise  not  only  his  spotlessness  before  men,  but  his 
sinlessness  before  his  own  conscience  and  God,  rising  to 
such  a  height  that  he  knows  and  proclaims  himself  to  be 
the  final  judge  of  mankind.  He  is  not  only  man's  moral 
model  and  his  spiritual  king;  and  he  is  so  related  to  God 
that  he  declares  man's  final  standing  before  God  to  be 
identical  with  man's  relation  to  himself.*  They  own  tha 
Christ  has  not  only  a  special  function  but  a  unique 
position.  He  stands  with  God  facing  man  much 
more  than  with  man  facing  God.  He  is  a  secondary 
God.  So  that  our  highest  possible  development  of 
human  communion  with  God  could  never  reach 
that  of  Christ.  Yet  he  is  not  of  one  nature  with  God. 
He  is  a  creation — an  intermediary  creation.  If  he  is  not 
of  Humanity,  neither  is  he  of  Deity.  He  was  too  humble 
before  God  to  be  of  God.  His  subordination  is  that  of 
a  creature,  after  all,  though  created  before  the  worlds  for 
a  unique  task.  And  it  carried  with  it  inferiority.!  It  is 
admitted    that  the  highest  claims  which  we  find  in  the 

"♦^  That  Christ  did  make  that  claim  to  the  divine  function  of  judging  and 
determining  the  world  for  eternity  is  to  me  so  indubitable  that  I  should 
make  the  point  decisive  of  sound  and  guiding  criticism.  And,  in  my  humble 
opinion,  a  scholar  so  able  and  sympathetic  in  many  ways  as  Bousset  is 
here  discredited  for  the  higher  ranges  of  the  subject  as  the  victim  of 
criticism  rather  than  its  master.  And  this  estimate  is  confirmed  by  his 
treatment  of  the  Messianic  idea,  and  the  part  it  played  in  the  mind  of 
Christ. 

t  This  is  a  moral  position  which  it  is  the  whole  business  of  the 
Athancisian  position  to  deny  :  and  it  is  a  position  which,  from  its  urgent 
ethical  mischief  to-d,iy,  might  alone  condemn  it  as  the  theology  most 
fitting  to  the  chaotic  time.  Service  and  obedience  are  not  undivine,  and 
not  a  badge  of  inferiority. 


bo  T/ie  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

mouth  and  the  mien  of  Jesus  are  claims  that  he  really  made. 
And  he  was  justified  in   making  them.     He  was  sinless. 
He  was,  and  is,  man's  Judge,  Redeemer,  and  King.    But 
these    functions  were  conferred  and  delegated  by  God, 
who  will  one  day  resume  them  from  His  sublime  servant. 
All  that  is  held  is  an  Arian  idea  of  Christ's  person,  its 
origin,  and  nature.     He  was   not  a   man,  but  he  shared 
creatureship   with    man.       He    was    a    created    being; 
fashioned  before  the  foundation  of  the  world,  indeed,  and 
equipped  by  his  Maker  with   especial  power  and  place, 
which  took  him  out  of  individual    Humanity,  made  him 
God's  corporate  representative  of  Humanity,  perhaps  the 
agent  of  its  creation,  and  enabled  him  for  the  exercise  of 
the  one  grand  divine  purpose  with  Humanity;  but  still  a 
creation,  with    less    than    eternity   in    his    own  nature, 
with  no  more  than  such  endowment  as  made  him  the 
efficient  organ  for  carrying  out  what  was  more  eternal 
than  himself,   namely,  God's  purpose  of  self-revelation. 
Even  were  he  regarded  as  a  personality  created  for  the 
special  purpose  of  being  filled   with  the  Spirit   uniquely 
and  entirely — he    would    still    be    a   created    being   and 
therefore  more  man  than  God.     What  he  had  from  God 
was  a  plenary  commission,  in  virtue  of  which  he  redeemed, 
judged,  and  ruled  as  King.     But  as  a   Satrap  King  still, 
with  a  Suzerain  who  conceivably  could  dethrone  him ;  a 
tributary  King,  who  one  day  would   render  his  royalty 
up.     He   was    God's    plenipotentiary.    His    superhuman 
chancellor,    the    most    private    secretary    of  his    eternal 
praise,  and  so  far  invested  with  His  power  and  prestige. 

They  draw  this  conception  of  Christ  especially  from 
his  own  consciousness  of  himself,  so  far  as  we  can  reach 
it,  especially  from  his  humility  and  sense  of  depen- 
dence.     But    they    exclude    almost     entirely    the    one 


\ 


III.]  The  Grealiicss  of  Christ  and  Infgrprefations  thereof  8i 

decisive  factor  in  the  modern  strife  between  a  lay 
liberalism  and  positive  faith  — his  consummatory  and  final 
work  of  the  cross,  and  all  that  that  meant  for  the  soul's 
destiny  in  the  apostolic  gospel.  With  that  exclusion 
there  is  no  poor  case  for  such  an  interpretation  of  Jesus. 
It  is,  in  some  form,  the  view  of  most  of  those  who  treat 
the  cross  as  ojtiose  and  yet  cannot  settle  to  a  thin  ^"^'^ 
Unilarianism.  It  is  the  crypto-unitarianism  of  many  who  X/'TT/O^ 
feed  themselves  and  others  on  Christian  sympathies  and  '  '  ''j>v 

Christian  ethic  without  Christian  redemption.  With  that 
omission  there  is  no  little  to  be  said  for  an  Arian  Jesus.  He 
seems  at  home  in  our  lay  reading  of  the  Synoptics — which 
forgets  the  space  they  give  to  his  priestly  passion.     Many 
of  his  express  statements  about  himself,  during  that  frag- 
ment of  his  existence  which  was  covered  by  the  kenosis  of  «    f    ^ 
his  earthly  life,  and  was  engaged  with  the  national  prolego-  '"  '' ' 
mena  of  his  universal  work,  are  compatible  with  such  a 
view.     What  he  knew    of   his  work    and  Kingdom  was 
taught  him  of  God  (Mat.  xi.  27).      "  It  is  all  taught  me 
of  my  Father."     In   John  he  speaks  but  what  he  hears 
from  the  Father,  and  does  but  what  he  sees  the  Father 
do.     His  miracles,  even  in  the  Synoptics,  he  often  does 
as  the  orgin  of  the  Father,  and  often  also  as  the  result 
of   answered    prayer,    and     not    out    of    a    parallel  and 
autonomous  power.     John   xi.  41,  42,  "Father,  I    know 
th.'it  thou  hearest  me   now  as  always,"  said  just  before 
calling    Lazarus     forth,    and     said    in     a    voice    whose 
loudness  revealed    the    spiritual  tension  which   for  him 
was   prevailing  prayer.       In   Luke   xi.  20,   he    casts  out 
devils  with  the  finger  of  God,  or,  as  Matthew  says,  by 
the  Spirit  of  God.     And  a  phrase  I  used  a  moment  ago, 
about  the  surrender  of  his  kingship  at  last,  will  recall,  by 
its  echo  of  i  Cor.  xv.  24-^8,  how  much  could  be  said  for 


82  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

this  Arian  stage  from  other  parts  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. It  is  a  matter  of  fair  discussion  whether  the 
express  and  formal  theology  of  the  New  Testament,  as 
distinct  from  its  gospel,  faith  and  worship,  is  always 
beyond  the  Arian  stage.  I  mean  what  is  called  the 
Biblical  stage  of  theology  ;  remembering  that  the  New 
Testament  has  faith  and  not  dogma  for  its  first  con- 
cern, and  that  the  expressly  theological  passages  are 
incidental  to  a  pastoral  purpose  and  an  evangelical 
effect.  They  are  incidental  to  the  epistle  though  funda- 
mental to  the  subject.  Such  truth  is  distinct  from  the 
theology  latent  and  necessary  to  the  New  Testament 
gospel,  and  waiting  there  to  be  revealed  by  the  Spirit  to 
the  Church's  soul,  when  it  became  tense  in  the  strain  of 
a  mortal  crisis,  and  when  its  last  spiritual  reserves  had 
to  be  called  out  in  the  battle  for  its  existence  in  a  pagan 
world.  It  is  one  thing  to  see  but  an  Arian  Christ  while 
the  theology  of  the  gospel  was  but  in  the  making.  That  is 
the  morning  twilight.  It  is  another  thing  to  stand 
arrested  there  and  denounce  an  Athanasian  Christ  now 
that  the  providence  of  the  Spirit  has  revealed,  in 
the  tremendous  experience  of  the  historic  Church,  a 
gospel  which  is  possible  on  that  profound  base  alone. 
That  is  the  evening  twilight.  And  when  it  claims  to  be 
the  advanced  and  primitive  view  it  can  only  be  advanced 
in  the  sense  of  being  at  eventide  and  verging  to  sheer 
oblivion. 

But  even  if  the  reported  and  express  statements  of 
Christ  carried  us  no  farther  than  this  stage  the  matter 
is  not  closed.  Could  Christ  teach  the  disciples  what  he 
taught  Paul  ?  For  if  on  earth  he  was  always  fully  con- 
scious of  all  he  was,  where  were  his  real  humiliation  and 
his  true  humanity  ?     We   ourselves  are  at   no   moment 


III.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  83 

conscious  of  all  we  are  or  have  been,  and  certainly  not 
of  what  we  shall  be  (t  Jn.  iii.  2).  Would  even  a  Christ 
created  before  the  worlds  be  conscious  on  earth  of  all 
the  power  and  glory  that  the  greatest  Arianism  would 
postulate  for  him  in  his  antenatal  life  ?  I  speak  of  the 
greatest  Arianism,  as  distinct  from  the  trivial  Arianism 
to  which  the  public  mind  is  apt  to  turn. 

§         §         § 

We  may  perhaps  put  it  thus.  If  in  the  first,  or  Socinian, 

stage  Christ  appeared  as  God's  perfect  prophet,  in  this 

second,  or  Arian,  stage  he  appears  as  God's  plenipotentiary , 

What  more  do  we  want  ?     Have  we  not  explained   the 

greatness  of  Christ  ?     No,  not  yet.     We  want  in  Christ 

God's  real  presence. 

In  the  first  stage  Christ  is  the  man ;  in  the  second  he 

is  the  superman.     We  must   still  ascend  to   the  supernal 

man,  the  Lord  from  heaven. 

§         §         § 
I  spoke  of  a  fatal   exclusion  and  renunciation  of  the 

work  of  the  cross  made  by  those  who  hold  this  Arian 
view  on  the  basis  of  one  part  of  Christ's  self-consciousness 
alone.  I  call  it  fatal  because  it  displaces  the  centre  of 
gravity,  because  the  last  secret  of  the  Saviour  is  not  in 
his  earthly  self-consciousness  as  we  know  it  but  in  his 
salvation.  They  ignore  not  only  other  parts  of  Christ's 
self-consciousness  as  I  hope  to  show  later  (Lect.  xi.)  but, 
still  more,  the  Christianity  of  the  Epistles,  the  Chris- 
tianity of  Redemption,  the  crisis  and  crown  of  Christ 
and  his  salvation  in  the  cross.  In  so  doing  they  raise 
what  is  the  question  of  the  hour  in  this  subject.  It  is 
a  question  that  rose  also  upon  the  apostles.  And  the 
Epistles  are  the  first  stage  of  the  answer,  religiously 
normative,  though  not  theologically   finished.     It  is  this 


84  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jcsiis  Christ  [lect. 

question ;  could  God's  plenipotentiary,  for  the  last  purposes 
of  the  soul  and  the  last  destiny  of  the  race,  be  a  creature  ? 
Could  man's  King,  Judge,  and  Saviour  be  other  than 
Godhead  itself?  Could  God's  commission,  however 
superhuman,  do,  for  such  as  we,  the  work  of  his  presence  ? 
Could  God  delegate  his  divinest  work  of  redemption  to 
even  the  greatest  of  his  creatures,  or  commit  all  judgment 
to  one  with  less  than  the  Godhead  of  the  Eternal  Son  ? 

This,  at  least,  is  the  great  question  within  the  Church 
to-day.  It  is  not  the  question  between  the  Church  and 
the  world,  which  is  whether  there  was  in  Christ  a  real 
revelation.  We  have  settled  that,  wherever  Agnosticism 
is  surmounted.  And  what  is  crucial  is  the  farther  inquiry 
whether  that  revelation  in  Christ  was  final ;  whether  in 
Christ  God  sent  or  went  to  the  world;  whether  in  Christ 
He  announced  himself  or  gave  Himself;  whether  Jesus, 
who  spoke  in  God's  name,  really  stood  in  God's  place, 
where  the  first  Church,  by  its  worship  of  him,  put  him. 
The  greatest  issue  for  the  moment  is  within  the  Christian 
pale;  it  is  not  between  Christianity  and  the  world.  It 
is  the  issue  between  theological  liberalism  (which  is  prac- 
tically unitarian)  and  a  free  but  positive  theology,  which 
is  essentially  evangelical. 

§  §  § 
3.  It  is  a  question  that  demands  at  last  the  Athanasian 
answer.  Christ  is  too  great  for  any  smaller  answer.  For 
greatness  is  in  the  nature  of  Athanasianism.  The  first 
Athanasianism  was  a  grand  escape  for  the  soul.  And 
the  passion  for  amplitude  and  plerophory  to  the  measure 
of  Christ  will  always  send  the  human  mind  to  some  form 
of  Athanasianism,  with  such  metaphysic,  whether  in  the 
Bible  or  not,  as  makes  that  answer  possible,  according 
to  the   state  of  contemporary  thought  at  any  specified 


iii.j  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  interpretations  thereof  85 

time.  The  question  I  have  described  as  so  crucial  in  the 
Church  demands  the  answer  of  the  cross,  when  the  cross 
is  taken  as  redemption  from  guilt,  and  not  mere  martyr- 
dom for  principle,  or  sacrifice  for  love.  It  demands  the 
faith  of  such  a  cross,  and  the  metaphysic  arising  out  of 
that  faith.  The  sinner's  reconcilement  with  a  holy  God 
could  only  be  effected  by  God.  And  I  press  the  efieduation 
of  it.  The  cross  did  not  mean  news  that  God  was  willing 
to  receive  us  on  terms  which  another  than  God  should 
meet  ;  nor  that  God  sat  at  home,  like  the  prodigal's  father, 
waiting  to  be  gracious  when  we  came.  But  with  God 
to  will  is  to  do ;  and  the  God  who  willed  man's  salvation 
must  himself  effect  it — not  accept  it,  and  not  contrive  it, 
but  effect  it.  Only  he  who  had  lost  us  could  find  us,  only 
he  who  was  wronged  could  forgive,  only  the  Holy  One 
satisfy  His  own  holiness.  To  forgive  he  must  redeem. 
Fully  to  forgive  the  guilt  he  must  redeem  from  the  curse. 
And  only  the  creator  knew  the  creature  so  as  to  redeem. 
And  to  know  mankind  He  must  live  in  mankind.  To 
offer  for  man  he  must  be  man.  Only  God  Himself  with 
us,  and  no  creature  of  His,  could  meet  the  soul's  last 
need,  and  restore  a  creation  undone.  Christ,  the 
source  of  the  race's  new  creation,  is  as  divine  and 
as  truly  creator  as  the  God  of  the  world's  beginning. 
(So  with  the  Spirit,  as  the  source  of  the  new  birth  of  the 
individual).  For  the  great  work  needed  was  to  recreate, 
which  is  what  mere  liberalism  and  its  humanism  denies. 
The  great  task  was  not  to  re-inforce  but  to  re-create,  and 
to  set  us  on  Eternal  rock.  But  if  the  Saviour  was  but 
an  emissary  of  God  and  not  very  God,  we  are  not  on 
rock,  even  if  we  are  off  the  sand.  There  is  then  no 
absolute  certainty  of  salvation  for  the  race.  And  we 
must  have  that  certainty  for  faith.     Vox   Christian  faith 

H 


86  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

is  much  more  than  the  sense  of  a  spiritual  God  :  it  is  the 
trust  of  an  absolute  God.  And  the  note  of  an  Apostle 
is  not  spirituality,  but  the  power  of  a  Gospel  which  passes 
us  from  death  to  life  ;  passes  us  not  merely  through  a  stage, 
but  through  the  mortal  crisis.  This  power  and  certainty  of 
the  race's  salvation  we  can  only  have  from  God  Himself  as 
Saviour,  God  could  not  depute  redemption.  We  could  not 
take  eternal  pardon  from  a  demigod,  or  commit  the  soul  to 
him  for  ever  as  we  do  to  Christ.  No  half-God  could 
redeem  the  soul  which  it  took  the  whole  God  to  create. 
God  himself  must  be  the  immediate  doer  in  what  Christ 
did  to  save.  I  shall  have  to  point  out,  nearer  the  close  of 
this  series,  that  the  effect  of  Christ  upon  history  could 
not  be  explained  by  any  greatness  which  a  created  soul 
could  achieve  on  earth ;  and  certainly  not  by  the  moral 
action  cognisable  by  us  during  his  brief  public  life.  It 
is  explicable  only  by  an  eternal  act  in  Godhead  which 
was  the  ground  of  all  on  earth — only  by  God  acting  in 
him.  On  any  lower  ground  God  but  accepted  Christ's 
work,  or  even  commissioned  it ;  he  did  not  do  it.  And 
does  it  need  a  God  to  accept  another's  sacrifice  ?  Are 
not  all  egoists  masters  in  the  un-divine  art  of  arranging 
for  the  sacrifice  of  others  and  accepting  it  ?  Mere  accept- 
ance of  sacrifice  by  God  means  that  He  was  really 
reconciled  by  a  third  person  neither  God  nor  man.  And 
what  is  the  effect  of  that  on  free  grace?  Ruinous. 
There  is  then  no  such  thing.  If  a  created  being,  however 
much  of  a  personal  splendour,  was  the  real  agent  either- 
of  revelation  or  redemption,  then  grace  was  procured  from 
God,  and  not  given — which  is  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
For  then  the  effectual  thing  was  not  done  by  God  but  by 
another.  And  God  was  not  reconciling  in  Christ,  but  at 
most   through    him.      It   all   impairs   the   freedom   and 


III.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  87 

monopoly  of  the  jealous  God   Himself  in  our  salvation. 
And  remember  the  first  charge  upon  any  theology  which 
has  gone  beyond  the  rationalist  stage  of  an  egotist  concern 
for  its  own  liberty — the  first  charge  on  a  true  and  positive 
theology  is  regard  for  the  freedom  of  God.     That  is  the 
only  source  and  condition  of  man's  freedom.     The  prime 
condition  of  human  freedom  is  a  free  God,  and  such  faith 
as  seeks  first  his  freedom,  and  has  all  other  things  added 
unto  it.     And  especially  we  must  regard  the  freedom  of 
God's  grace   and    of  his   salvation.      If   a   created   will 
effected  our  salvation,  God's  reality  in  it  is  one  vast  stage 
removed,  and  His  sole  grace  is  impaired.     The  only  real 
representative  or  plenipotentiary  of  a   God  whose  grace 
is  free  and  all  his  own  must  be  God.     He  must  be  of  God 
not  merely  from  God.     He  could  be  no  creature,  whether 
that  creature   had    his  power   as    a   gift   from    God,    or 
acquired   it  by  moral   effort  under  God.     The  absolute 
nature  of  the  salvation  brought  to  our  faith  can  only  be 
secured  by  the  absolute  nature  of  him  who  brought  it. 
If  it  is  an  eternal  salvation,  and  the  gates  of  hell  cannot 
prevail  against  it,  he  who  gives  it  is  an  eternal  saviour. 
If  we  have  God  for  our  eternal  portion,  then  he  is  God  in 
whom  we  have  it,  and  not  only  through  whom.     In  him, 
and  not  through  him  !     The  Christianity  which   denies 
that  is  less  "  advanced  "  than  that  which  confesses  it — less 
advanced  at  least  as  Christianity,  less  forward  in  the  faith 
that    makes   theology,    however  it    may  stand  with   the 
rationalist    theology    that    claims    to   licence  faith   from 
some  source  above  it.     A  salvation  only  through  Christ 
leaves  us  with  a  religion  too  subjective  for  use.     And  the 
excessive  religious  subjectivity  of  the  hour  is  the  nemesis 
of  a  mere  liberalism  whose  next   stage  is  the  destruction 
of  religion  altogether. 


88  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

§         §         § 
And    this   consideration    may   be   added    here.       Will 

many  not  be  driven  to  the  alternative  of  either  praying 
to  Christ  or  praying /o>'  him  ?     Many  of  those  who  lean 
to  a  positive  and  liberal   theology,  and  who  retain  belief 
in    intercessory  prayer     at  all,    both    believe    in    prayer 
for  the  dead   and  practise   it.     And  when  they  pray  for 
the  whole  of  mankind  they  cannot  ignore  its  majority  in 
the  unseen,  including  both  our  benefactors  and  our  beloved, 
We  may  pray,  we  do  pray,  for   the  whole  creation.     If 
that  may  include  the  dead,  can  it  exclude  a  created  and 
departed  Christ  ?     May  we,   must  we,  not,  if  we  have 
leave  to  pray  for  the  blessed  dead  at  all,  pray  for  the 
greatest  lover  and  benefactor  in  our  race  ?     Should  not 
the  collective  Church  pray  for  its  founder  ?     If  he  was 
but  a  created  Christ,  to  whom   we  may  not  pray,  would 
the  gratitude  of  a  Church   he  created  not  move  it  to  a 
great  bidding  prayer  for  him  ?  And  on  great  commemor- 
ative occasions  at  least,  as  the  sense  grows  of  our  spiritual 
obligations  to  such  a  Christ,  should  we  not  be  driven  to 
lift    our    soul    as    Parsifal    ends    "  Redeemed     be    the 
Redeemer." 

Lord  God,  who  savest  men,  save  most 

Of  men  Christ  Jesus  who  saved  me. 

§  §  § 

The  two  lines  of  inquiry  converge,  I  said — the  work  of 
Christ  and  the  consciousness  of  Christ ;  and  they  con- 
verge here.  He  was  conscious  of  himself  as  Redeemer. 
This  was  a  part  of  his  Messianic  sense,  no  less  than  was 
his  action  as  Judge  and  King.  He  knew  he  was  there 
not  only  with  God's  judgment,  but  with  God's  final 
salvation.     And   for  Israel  that  had  always  meant  the 


III.]  Tke  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  89 

presence  of  God  Himself  as  man's  refuge,  righteousness, 
and  redeemer.  Each  of  these  three  features,  God's 
judgment,  His  salvation,  and  His  presence,  is  equally 
prominent  in  the  Messianic  idea  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  its  great  good  time.  The  closing  era  should  be  so 
rich  in  good  because  God  himself  would  dwell  in  it.  And 
when  Christ  knew  Himself  as  the  Messiah  of  man  and  of 
God,  when  he  translated  the  Messianic  idea  in  terms  of 
his  own  sonship,  he  lost  no  one  of  these  features.  If  the 
judgment  and  the  salvation  of  God  were  incorporated  in 
him,  so  also,  and  no  less  directly,  was  God's  presence. 
The  great  Messianic  time,  like  the  history  it  crowned, 
was  God's  coming,  it  was  not  His  sending.  God  was  no 
more  remote.  He  did  not  begin  where  his  messenger, 
his  creature  ended.  He  was  not  removed  by  the  measure 
of  Christ's  very  existence,  nor  distant  by  the  diameter  of 
that  vast  personality.  He  was  that  messenger.  That 
greatness  was  God's  greatness.  That  love  was  God's 
love.  That  grace  was  God's  immediate  grace,  and  no 
echo,  report,  or  image  of  it ;  it  was  God's  grace  as  surely 
as  that  judgment,  or  that  forgiveness,  was  God's. 

Jesus  did  not  indeed  put  all  this  into  words.  He  did 
not  lecture  about  his  person.  He  spoke  and  acted  as 
only  such  a  God  with  us  could.  But  if  he  was  not  theo- 
logically express  about  his  Godhead  was  he  not  conscious 
of  it?  Surely  he  was  at  least  subconscious.  It  was 
fundamental  to  his  manner  of  life,  and  work,  even  if  we 
thought  a  full  sense  of  it  was  but  occasional  and  in- 
cidental. Our  greatest  truths,  perhaps,  escape  from  us 
rather  than  are  preached.  If  his  deity  be  not  express 
always  in  the  preaching  of  his  lips,  it  is  essential  in  the 
gospel  of  his  person  and  cross.  If  it  is  not  unmistakable 
in  everything  he  said  it  is  inevitable  in  the  thing  he  did. 


go  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

Had  he  no  sense  of  that  ?  How  could  one  of  his  insight 
miss  all  such  latent  significance  as  I  have  indicated  in 
the  claims  he  made  ?  He  knew  himself  to  be  among 
men  for  certain  universal  purposes,  to  be  final  king, 
judge,  and  redeemer.  Could  it  escape  him  that  these 
were  functions  which  in  Israel's  ideal  were  reserved  for 
God  alone?  He  calls  himself  king  in  God's  kingdom.  He 
is  the  bridegroom  of  the  true  Israel,  whose  husband,  in  all 
the  Old  Testament,  was  God  alone.  He  is  to  sit  on  the 
throne  of  glory,  where  no  Jew  could  place  any  but  God. 
The  angels  he  sends  forth  as  his  angels.  The  blessed  of 
the  father  are  his  elect.  The  omnipotence  of  God  is 
given  him  in  a  passage  (Mat.  xxviii.  i8)  which  it  is  much 
easier,  with  all  the  tremendous  demand  it  makes  on  us, 
to  assign  to  him  than  to  ascribe  to  the  daring  of  a  Church 
which  put  it  in  his  mouth.  How  could  disciples  of  his 
have  made  him  say  anything  like  that  (whether  the  words 
are  stenographically  correct  or  not)  unless  it  was  in  tune 
with  his  own  claim  for  himself?  He  knows  himself  to  be 
the  final  judge,  and  there  is  no  appeal,  and  no  revision  of 
his  sentence.  He  takes,  in  many  ways,  God's  place  to 
the  faithful.  And  all  the  while  he  is  not  obscuring 
God,  or  displacing  Him,  but  revealing,  mediating,  con- 
veying Him;  yet  doing  it  not  as  a  mere  transparency,  a 
mere  exhibition  of  God,  but  as  a  mighty  will  and  living 
personality,  with  a  real  agency  in  things.  Either  in  such 
a  case  we  have  the  incarnation  of  God,  or  we  have  the 
deification,  and  the  self-deification,  of  a  man.  If  we  are  to 
talk  of  mythology,  which  of  these  is  more  mythological? 
And  the  latter  was  especially  alien  to  Israel,  with  its 
awful  gulf  between  God  and  man. 

§         §         § 
The  tendency  of  the    hour  among  the   more  piquant 


III. J   Tfte  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  91 

expositors  of  such  matters  is  to  regard  the  greatness  of 
Christ  as  the  incarnation  of  Humanity  rather  than  of 
God.  On  this  two  remarks  only  may  be  made.  First, 
if  we  use  Saxon,  and  say,  for  the  incarnation  of  Human- 
ity, the  enfleshment  of  flesh,  we  perceive  that  there  is 
something  wrong.  And  we  go  on  to  see  that  it  is  not  an 
incarnation  of  Humanity  that  is  meant,  but  only  a  con- 
densation, or  epitome.  And  second,  if  we  speak  of  the 
incarnation  of  Humanity  in  any  sense  that  leaves  room 
for  God  at  all,  one  of  two  things  follows,  which  are  both 
wrong,  (i)  Either  Christ  incarnates  a  created  Humanity 
dwelling  with  God  in  the  recesses  of  premundane  time — 
in  which  case  we  are  back  upon  one  of  the  many  shades 
of  Arianism.  (2)  Or  he  incarnates  an  increate  Human- 
ity ;  which  is  therefore  an  eternal  integer  or  factor  in 
Godhead.  This  gives  us  not  so  much  an  incarnation  of 
God  as  a  deification  and  idolatry  of  man,  ending  practi- 
cally in  his  debasement.  The  finitude,  and  therefore  the 
reality,  of  man  is  gone. 

The  Eternal  Son  of  God  is  then  but  the  Humanity 
eternal  in  God.  This  is  a  view  which  is  much  in  keeping 
with  the  modern  man's  keen  self-consciousness  and  his 
dull  ethic  which  takes  no  measure  of  either  his  race's  sin 
or  a  holy  God.  It  gives  to  Humanity  what  belongs  to 
the  only  begotten  Son.  It  gives  to  the  Humanity  that 
the  Son  came  to  redeem  the  position  which  belongs  to 
the  Son  alone,  and  alone  made  redemption  possible. 
Humanism  is  then  simply  the  old  cthnicism,  gentilism, 
or  heathenism  made  universal.  It  is  an  enlargement  of 
what  is  both  to  Old  Testament  and  New  Testament  the 
supreme  heresy,  that  man  is  enough  for  himself  and  has  a 
right  in  God.  Man  is  referred  to  his  divine  self  for 
his  destiny.       It  is  paganism  with   a   Christian    facing. 


92  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

Humanity  is  safe  in  its  own  innate  resources,  its 
immanent  inalienable  deity.  If  redeemed  at  all  it  is 
self-redeemed,  to  its  own  endless  praise  and  glory  ; 
which  is  surely  another  religion  from  Christ's.  Positiv- 
ism has  been  described  as  Catholicism  with  the  bottom 
knocked  out ;  but  this  is  a  Positivism  with  a  Trinity 
forced  in.  The  old  beliefs,  cults,  and  phrases  are  first 
deflated,  and  then  twisted  into  modern  arabesques.  As 
history  goes  on  the  burden  of  the  old  ceremonialism  is 
replaced  by  the  officialism  of  the  social  state.  A  church 
of  faith  becomes  a  fraternity  of  comfort.  Theology 
becomes  anthropology.  And  religion  hardens  into  a 
service  without  a  trust  or  a  loyalty.  Worship  vanishes 
for  work,  and  work  descends  into  an  Egyptian  corvee. 

§  §  § 
Throughout  all,  the  impressive  thing  about  Christ's 
vast  self-consciousness  is  his  sense  of  finality.  It  is  upon 
this  that  so  much  turns — not  on  his  being  a  revelation  of 
God  but  the  revelation,  the  final  revelation.  It  was  with 
Christ's  world  that  God  had  henceforth  to  do.  There  is 
no  thought  in  Christ  (or  in  the  New  Testament  at  all)  of 
another  coming  from  God  to  complete  his  work.  The 
Spirit  only  applied  it — especially  to  individuals.  In  him 
God  said  his  last  word,  and  took  his  inmost  and  final 
attitude  to  men.  The  Father  has  only  now  to  do  with  a 
kingdom  created  by  the  Son.  But  if  the  Son  were  a 
creature  that  means  that  God  had  to  do  with  a  kingdom 
secured  by  an  inferior,  and  only  presented  to  Him.  And 
how  could  God's  kingdom  be  the  work  of  another  than 
God,  or  only  indirectly  of  God  ?  Christ's  sense  of 
finality  we  must  recognise;  which  is  his  faith,  however 
implicit,  in  his  own  Godhead.  We  must  acknowledge 
his  sense  of  his  own  finality  in  the  last  moral  issue  of  th^ 


iii.J  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  93 

world,  the  supreme  human  issue,  the  issue  between  God 
and  man,  hfe  and  death.  He  knew  he  was  decisive  in 
that  issue.  And  who  could  be  final  or  decisive  there 
but  God  ?  The  final  revelation  could  only  be  God  re- 
vealing Himself,  in  the  sense  of  God  bestowing  Himself, 
and  Himself  coming  to  men  to  restore  communion. 
What  remains  to  be  done  for  finality  after  that  ?  A 
message  could  never  be  a  final  revelation,  nor  could  a 
messenger.  We  should  then  infer  God,  surmise  God, 
take  Him  on  trust  from  another,  or  otherwise  have  him 
at  one  remove,  but  we  should  not  possess  him.  He  might 
be  God  for  us,  but  not  God  with  us,  or  in  us.  And 
unless  he  were  God  finally  with  and  in  us  we  should 
doubt  often  if  he  was  for  us.  But  we  possess  God  in  a 
Christ  who  does,  and  knows  he  does,  things  reserved 
always  for  God  to  do.  His  love  was  not  an  echo  of  God's 
love;  or  a  declaration  of  it  by  one  who  might  have  ex- 
aggerated by  temperament.  No  depth  of  conviction  on 
the  part  of  a  created  and  prophetic  Christ  however  holy 
could  give  us  final  certainty  as  to  the  Grace  of  God. 
"  God  only  knows  the  love  of  God."  God  alone  can  for- 
give, who  is  the  holiness  offended  ;  God  alone  judge 
who  is  the  living  law.  Was  the  Great  Saviour  so  dull  as 
not  to  realise  that  ?  As  he  felt  his  own  mission  alone 
among  all  men  to  save,  how  did  he  feel  as  he  read  in  his 
Bible  words  like  these: — "I  am  God,  and  besides  me 
there  is  no  Saviour"  ?  How  would  that  strike  him  as  he 
knew  himself  to  be  not  the  mere  herald  of  salvation  but 
the  Saviour,  when  he  not  only  forgave  particular  cases 
but  knew  that  he  was  there  to  ransom  the  world  by  an 
offering  for  its  sin  ?  Cculd  he  have  said  "  indirectly  it  is 
God,  but  directly  it  is  I  "  ?  Is  there  any  trace  of  such 
theologising  with  him  ?     Must  he  not  have  known  himsell 


94  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  fLEcx. 

for  the  incarnation  of  the  Eternal  saving  Will  of  God, 
the  Eternal  agent  of  the  Eternal  purpose? 

§  §  § 
If  it  be  said  that  he  must  have  showed  his  conscious- 
ness of  his  divine  nature  (and  not  merely  of  his  divine 
vocation),  by  a  position  of  more  independence  and 
initiative  over  against  God,  the  answer  is  this :  His 
sense  of  unity  with  God  was  too  great  and  intimate  for 
that.  It  was  the  unity  of  the  Son — of  a  perfect  obedi- 
ence ;  which  is  just  as  divine  as  perfect  authority  is.  It 
was  not  the  unity  of  a  second  God,  a  joint  God,  a  God 
in  perpetual  alliance  with  God.  I  keep  asking,  is  the 
principle  of  obedience,  which  is  man's  very  salvation,  not 
divine,  not  in  Godhead  at  all  ? 

§  §  § 
At  least,  we  have  seen  and  shall  see,  there  is  nothing  in 
the  consciousness  of  Christ,  however  reserved  about  it 
he  had  reason  to  be,  which  is  incompatible  with 
the  postulate  of  his  deity  as  that  is  demanded  by  the 
nature  of  his  work  in  our  saved  experience.  And  it  is 
only  to  that  personal  and  final  faith  that  it  really  comes 
home.  The  deity  of  Christ  cannot  be  proved  to  either 
the  lower  or  the  higher  rationalism,  either  to  the  deistic 
or  the  idealist,  the  Wolffian  or  the  Hegelian.  It  cannot 
be  proved  either  to  the  man  in  the  street  or  the  sage  in 
the  chair — but  only  to  the  evangelical  experience.  It  is 
our  pardon  that  is  the  foundation  of  our  theology — our 
eternal  pardon  for  an  "  eternal  sin  "  (Mark  iii.  29).  Did 
Jesus  connect  this  saving  effect  of  his  with  his  person  or 
with  his  message  ?  With  the  work  he  did,  or  with  the 
idea  he  brought?  We  are  here  at  a  most  crucial 
question — indeed  the  question.  He  can  only  be  under- 
stood by  those  who  hold  the  right  relation  to  him.     1 


III.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  95 

suppose  we  are  all  agreed  about  that.  What  is  that  right 
relation  ?  Is  it  our  critical  relation  to  an  idealist,  or  our 
subject  relation  to  a  Saviour  ?  Are  we  but  an  aided 
Church,  or  are  we  a  purchased  people  ?  Do  we  chiefly 
learn  from  his  words,  and  admire  at  his  character,  or  do 
we  worship  at  his  feet — which  ?  It  is  really  the  choice 
between  a  religion  finally  cosmic  and  rational  and  one 
finally  personal,  ethical,  and  evangelical.  The  great 
conflict  to-day  must  be  settled  in  the  personal  religion  of 
each  inquirer.  It  really  is  not  a  question  of  our  con- 
clusions but  of  our  faith.  It  calls  for  decision  rather 
than  arbitration,  for  choice  rather  than  compromise  ; 
because  it  is  the  finest  form  of  the  deep  dilemma  between 
Christianity  and  the  world.  And  it  is  this.  Is  saving 
faith  a  Rationalism,  i.e.  a  faith  in  universal  ideas,  in- 
tuitions, or  processes,  which  have  no  exclusive  relation 
to  a  fixed  point  in  history  ?  Or  is  it  gathered  to  such  a 
fixed  point,  in  the  historic  Christ,  where  God,  in 
presence,  actually  offers  himself  to  man  in  judgment  and 
for  man  in  Grace  ?  Do  we  start  from  the  World  or  the 
Word  ?  Are  we  to  demand  that  Christ  shall  submit  to 
the  standard  of  certain  principles  or  ideals  which  we 
bring  to  him  from  our  human  nature  at  its  heart's 
highest  and  its  thought's  best  ?  Or  as  our  new  creator 
is  he  his  own  standard,  and  not  only  so  but  both  judge, 
king,  and  redeemer  of  human  nature,  and  the  fountain  of 
a  new  life,  autonomous  in  him,  and  for  all  the  rest  derived  ? 
Is  he  our  spiritual  hero,  or  our  Eternal  Lord  and  God  ? 
Is  he  the  prophet  and  champion  of  man's  magnificent 
resource,  or  is  he  the  redeemer  of  man's  spiritual  poverty 
and  moral  wreck  ?  Did  he  come  to  transfigure  before 
men  the  great  religious  and  ethical  ideas,  or  to  infuse 
into  men  new  power,  in  the  thorough,  final,  and  godlike 


96  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

sense  of  endowing  them  with  a  new  and  ransomed  life  ? 
Did  he  refurbish  Humanity,  or  redeem  it?  Did  he 
release  its  best  powers,  or  bestow  them  ?  That  is  the 
last  issue,  however  we  may  blunt  its  edge,  or  soften  its 
exigency  in  particular  cases.  It  is  between  a  rational 
Christianity  and  a  redemptive.  And  it  is  not  to  be 
obscured  by  extenuations  which  plead  that  the  function 
of  ideas  is  redemptive,  or  that  redemption  is  the  pro- 
foundest  rationality  in  the  world,  the  "passion  which  is 
highest  reason  in  a  soul  divine,"  That  was  a  line  that 
nearly  lost  Christianity  to  the  pagan  public  in  the  old 
apologists,  whose  great  object  was  to  make  their  religion 
stand  well  with  the  Universities  and  the  State — a  perilous 
attempt  for  Christianity.  The  crisis  of  society  and  of  the 
Church  is  at  present  such  that  a  clear  issue  is  the  first 
necessity,  a  clear  issue  for  a  final  choice.  When  we  are 
dealing  with  the  last  things  it  is  from  the  lack  of  choice 
that  we  suffer  most,  not  from  the  lack  of  compromise. 
It  is  lack  of  decision,  it  is  not  lack  of  an  ideal  ethic,  that 
is  our  moral  disease  at  this  hour.  We  avoid  decision  in 
a  languid  liberalism,  or  in  a  gentle,  genial  spirituality.  But 
though  we  may  compromise  on  measures  we  may  not  on 
faith.  We  need  more  of  the  spirit  of  compromise  in 
affairs,  but  we  have  too  much  of  it  in  the  soul's  faith. 
The  real  object  of  Christian  research  is  not  the  purely 
historic  Christ,  the  historic  residuum,  nor  is  it 
Humanity's  spiritual  ideal;  but  within  the  historic 
Christ  it  is  the  living  God,  the  Saviour,  who  chose 
us  to  choose  Him,  and  whom  we  find  here,  in  his  history, 
or  not  at  all.  It  is  not  the  ideal  man  we  seek, 
who  verifies  and  glorifies  our  noblest  Humanity,  con- 
vincing us  of  its  inalienable  place  in  God  in  spite  of  all 
our  sin;  but  it  is  the  redeeming  God  who  sets  Humanity 


III.]  The  Greatness  of  Christ  and  Interpretations  thereof  97 

in  heavenly  places  in  Christ  Jesus.  It  is  not  a  theological 
difference  which  troubles  us  but  a  religious.  It  is  lack  of 
personal  and  positive  religion.  And  it  is  the  attempt  to 
cover  with  one  vague  Christian  name  two  different 
religions,  and  two  distinct  and  incompatible  gods.  And 
when  it  comes  to  a  choice  of  religions,  what  we  need  is 
more  religion,  more  searching  religion,  and  not  advanced 
knowledge.  And  more  religion  among  the  religious  is 
the  chief  need  of  the  hour. 


LECTURE    IV 

THE    TESTIMONY    OF    CHRIST'S    SELF- 
CONSCIOUSNESS— WAS    HE   A   PART    OF  HIS 

OWN    GOSPEL? 


LECTURE    IV 

THE      TESTIMONY     OF     CHRIST's     SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS — 
WAS    HE   A    PART   OF    HIS    OWN    GOSPEL  ? 

This  is  a  question  that  has  been  stirred  into  extraordi- 
nary vitality  by  Dr.  Harnack.  And  that  I  may  be  just 
to  Harnaci<,  and  dissever  him  from  the  extreme  critics 
who  have  exploited  his  phrase,  let  me  quote  his  words. 
He  says  :  "  What  belongs  to  the  Gospel  as  Jesus  preached 
it,  is  not  the  Son  but  the  Father  alone."  In  quoting 
these  words  it  is  common  to  overlook  the  important 
qualification,  "  As  Jesus  preached  it."  Now  what  Jesus 
preached  was  but  part  of  the  whole  Gospel.  The  whole 
claim  of  Jesus  for  himself  is  not  to  be  determined  by  the 
explicit  words  he  uses  about  himself,  but  also,  and  even 
more,  by  the  claims  set  up  on  us  by  the  whole  gospel  of 
his  person  and  work  when  these  had  been  perfected.  The 
claim  of  Jesus  in  his  cross  and  resurrection  is  even  greater 
than  the  claim  explicit  in  his  mouth.  His  redemption 
has  been  a  greater  power  than  his  doctrine.  In  respect 
of  Harnack's  meaning,  the  author  puts  himself  right 
in  the  sentence  following  that  I  have  quoted,  where 
so  many  stop  and  do  him  wrong :  He  goes  on 
"Jesus  belongs  to  his  gospel  not  as  a  part  of  it,  but  as 
its  embodiment.     He  is  its  personal  realization  and  its 

I  lOI 


102  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

power.  And  such  he  will  always  be  felt  to  be."  More- 
over, adds  Harnack  in  a  subsequent  publication  {Reden  und 
Aufsdtze  II.  364),  "There  is  no  generic  category  under 
which  Christ  can  be  placed,  whether  it  be  Reformer, 
Prophet  or  Founder."  Harnack's  meaning,  therefore, 
would  seem  to  be  that  Christ  was  no  part  of  his  own  gospel 
but  the  whole.  He  declared  a  Father  who  was  only  to  be 
known  in  the  Son.  He  did  not  belong  to  God's  great 
gift ;  he  was  that  Gift.  God  gave  Himself  in  Christ. 
Such  a  belief  would  seem  to  be  more  just  to  Harnack 
than  the  use  too  often  made  of  his  isolated  phrase. 

The  answer  to  the  question  does  not  lie  on  the  sur- 
face if  we  confine  ourselves  to  the  Synoptics.  But  there 
is  no  doubt  about  it  if  we  go  by  the  whole  apostolic 
teaching.  From  Paul  to  John  it  is  declared  that  Jesus 
was  the  gospel,  and  offered  himself  as  such,  and  that 
none  come  to  the  Father  but  by  him  and  in  him.  For 
the  New  Testament,  taken  as  a  whole,  the  historical 
Christ  is  the  Messiah  that  was  coming  through  the  Old 
Testament  ;  who  appeared  in  Jesus  as  the  word  made 
flesh,  full  ot  grace,  and  truth,  and  power,  and  signs,  and 
wonders  ;  who  was  crucified  and  rose,  making  atonement 
for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world  ;  who  ascended  up  to 
heaven,  where  he  now  and  forever  represents  us  with  the 
Father,  sends  his  Spirit,  and  rules  his  Church.  He 
was  not  a  mere  Rabbi  of  the  law,  but  the  Messiah  of 
the  final  promise,  and,  since  his  death,  the  Saviour 
of  the  whole  world.  He  was  not  the  Nazarene, 
the  most  illustrious  figure  of  the  New  Testament, 
and,  indeed,  of  religious  history  ;  but  he  was  the 
Christ  who  underlies  and  carries  the  whole  history  of 
salvation,  and  therefore  the  history  of  the  world.  He 
was  a  Christ  with  a  premundane  history  of  his  own.    For 


IV.]         The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self -Consciousness       103 

the  New  Testament,  as  a  whole,  he  was  the  Christ  of  the 
gospel— of  something  which  is  indeed  within  .the  Bible — 
but  of  something  which  is  its  soul  and  not  its  residuum. 
He  was  the  Christ  of  a  Gospel  within  the  Bible,  and  not 
simply  the  Jesus  of  a  Bible  within  the  Bible,  not  simply 
the  Jesus  of  a  Bible  reduced  by  criticism  alone  to  a 
historical  remnant.  He  was  not  the  Jesus  left  us  by  the 
extreme  critics,  one  whose  great  action  must  be  wholly 
compressed  between  his  baptism  and  his  death;  but 
he  was  the  Eternal  Son  of  God,  preached  by  a  cloud 
of  witnesses,  many  nameless,  of  whom  Paul  was  the 
chief.  He  was  the  Son  "  with  a  prologue  of  eternal 
history  and  an  epilogue  of  the  same,"  throned  not  on 
the  world's  history  simply,  but  at  God's  right  hand  where 
all  history  is  judged  ;  the  Son  whose  earthly  life  is  only 
intelligible  on  that  background. 

That  is  the  New  Testament  Christ.  And  if  we  re- 
pudiate that  we  should  be  clear  what  we  do.  We  are 
making  a  choice  between  the  New  Testament  and  the 
modern  critical  school.  It  is  not  as  if  the  whole  New  Testa- 
ment when  critically  handled  were  on  their  side.  They  do 
not  now  claim  that.  What  they  claim  is  that  the  history 
behind  the  New  Testament  is.  They  claim  that  apostolic 
Christianity,  being  what  I  have  said,  misunderstood  Jesus. 
They  do  not  attempt  to  read  modern  interpretations  into 
Pauline  passages,  as  our  Broad  Churchism  was  apt  to  do. 
We  should  be  clear  and  frank  that  in  adopting  the  most 
modern  view  we  repudiate  the  New  Testament  as  Christ's 
expositor,  in  favour  oi  an  exposition  totally  different, 
offered  by  modern  criticism  working  entirely  on  the 
Synoptics,  or  on  what  is  left  of  them  by  a  certain 
philosophy  of  religion.  We  reduce  the  New  Testament 
to  a  piece  of  tradition  ;  and  in  so  doing  we  surrender  the 


104  ^^^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

protestant   position  to  the  catholic,  as  so  much  modern 
culture  does  in  effect. 

The  question  of  the  hour  then,  is  this — if  we 
keep  critically  to  the  Synoptics  can  the  Christ  of  the 
New  Testament  be  retained  ?  The  inquiry  has  changed 
since  the  Tubingen  days.  The  historical  reality  of  Jesus 
is  not  much  challenged.  What  is  challenged  is  the 
dogmatic  Christ  in  his  finality  and  absoluteness,  which 
is  the  apostolic  interpretation  of  his  history.  And  of 
late  the  question  is  even  more  narrowed.  Criticism  is 
being  driven  to  grant  that  even  the  Synoptics  are 
written  in  the  interest  of  this  final  and  apostolic  Christ. 
Can  we,  may  we,  go  behind  that  Christ  ?  Can  we  shed  the 
apostolic  theologisms  which  are  said  to  distort  even  the 
Synoptics,  and  construct  a  simple  human  Jesus  to  be  the 
delight  of  the  lay  type  of  mind  everywhere?  You  perceive 
that  such  teaching  does  not  repudiate  evangelical  Protes- 
tantism merely,  but  the  New  Testament.  And  thus  the 
question  of  the  right  of  such  teaching  in  the  Church  is 
more  serious  than  ever.  Undogmatic  Christianity  repu- 
diates the  New  Testament  interpretation  of  Christ.  It  is 
one  thing  to  claim  the  right  to  a  free  handling  of  the 
New  Testament,  it  is  another  to  repudiate  the  New 
Testament  version  of  Christ  for  the  critical.  One  is 
lawful  in  a  Church,  and  one  is  illicit. 

Of  course  it  must  at  once  be  recognised  that  if 
Christ  did  preach  himself  he  did  not  do  it  in  the 
way  of  a  blunt  or  naive  egotism.  That  is  not  how 
he  convinced  the  disciples  that  he  was  the  Messiah, 
yet  he  made  the  belief  irresistible  in  them.  It  is  not  the 
way  he  convinced  the  apostles  of  the  divinity  in  him  ;  yet 
he  so  impressed  it  that  they  could  do  no  other  than 
worship  him.     We  shall  have  gained  much  from  questions 


IV.]       The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self- Consciousness        105 

like  Harnack's  if  they  cure  us  of  the  habit  of  looking  for 
a  revelation  in  statements,  for  brusque  dogmatisms  of 
the  kind  that  satisfies  the  plain  man,  with  the  muzzle  of 
his  '  Yes  or  No  '  at  our  head.  Christ  always  refused 
satisfaction  to  the  demand  that  he  would  tell  his  critics 
plainly  if  he  were  the  Messiah  or  not.  He  is  not  the 
Christ  of  the  plain-dealer.  He  always  did  refuse  to 
be  coerced,  or  have  his  methods  prescribed.  There  he 
was  masterful  and  impracticable.  He  was  the  sole 
judge  of  the  situation,  as  he  is  of  the  world.  It  was  for 
him,  as  the  revealer,  both  to  read  the  moment  and  to  take 
the  only  way  in  it  consistent  with  the  revelation.  And 
that  some  people  should  perish  upon  his  refusals  con- 
cerned him  less  than  that  he  should  compromise  his 
Father's  way  and  will  for  his  work — which  was  not,  after 
all,  to  save  men  the  trouble  of  judging  and  choosing,  nor  to 
gather  the  largest  possible  number  of  believers  in  a 
given  time. 

§  §  § 
Let  us  look  at  his  teaching  in  the  Synoptics  then  and 
see  where  it  carries  us.  Let  us  see  if  it  do  not  carry  us  far 
beyond  a  teacher  of  truth,  or  even  a  preacher  of  the  Father  ; 
if  we  have  not  in  his  synoptical  proclamation  of  the 
Kingdom  sufficient  points  of  attachment  for  the  Johannine 
preaching  of  himself. 

Surely  he  preached  himself  as  the  Messiah  of  the 
Kingdom.  It  was  a  Messiahship  of  burden  much  more 
than  of  elation — even  if  we  do  not  interpret  the  burden 
of  it  in  the  sense  of  Bousset,  who  reads  there  not  the 
burden  of  the  Cross  but  the  burden  of  a  misconception  in 
which  he  was  hopelessly  entangled.  Is  it  not  equally 
true  that  he  thought  of  himself  as  in  a  category  distinct 
from  other  men,  whether  we  regard  his  relation  to  God 


lo6  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

or  to  the  world  ?  Where  he  came  salvation  came — as  to 
Zaccheus  by  his  very  presence.  He  stood  between  men 
and  God,  not  with  men  before  God.  A  word  spoken 
against  him  was  comparable,  however  different,  to  a  sin 
against  God's  Holy  Spirit.  For  both  were  against  God. 
They  were  not  like  sins  against  men.  That  is  to  say,  he 
has  to  make  his  historic  personality  parallel  with  the  Holy 
Spirit  before  he  can  set  up  the  contrast,  which  is  only 
effectual  between  beings  ejusdem  generis.  He  was  greater 
than  the  temple,  he  said — as  no  prophet  could  be.  In 
the  parable  of  the  vineyard  he  is  the  only  son,  the 
beloved,  distinct  from  all  the  messengers  besides.  He 
never  prays  with  his  disciples,  much  as  he  prays  for 
them ;  and  the  Lord's  prayer  was  given  by  him  but  not 
used  by  him.  There  is  a  line  between  him  and  them, 
delicate  but  firm,  "  often  as  fine  as  a  hair  but  alwavs  as 
hard  as  a  diamond."  What  he  asks  is  devotion  to  his 
person  and  not  simply  to  his  doings,  to  his  soul  and  not 
to  his  words.  To  trust  him  is  more  even  than  to  do  his 
commands.  To  love  God  and  man  in  obedience  to  a 
commandment  is  better  than  to  be  the  slave  of  ritual,  but 
it  is  still  to  be  outside  the  Kingdom  of  his  Gospel.  (Mark 
xii.  34).  He  has  nothing  to  say  about  martyrdom  for  a 
cause,  even  for  the  Gospel ;  but  he  has  a  supreme  blessing 
for  those  who  lose  life  for  his  sake  and  the  Gospel's. 
There  is  not  a  relation  of  life,  however  deep  or  tender, 
that  must  not  be  sacrificed  to  his  claim  upon  due  occa- 
sion. Here  he  assumes  a  right  comparable  only  to  that 
of  death,  which  claims  and  snatches  us  from  every  rela- 
tion of  duty,  passion,  or  interest.  He  assumes  the  right 
belonging  to  a  God  who  masters  us  in  death  if  He  never 
did  before.  Perhaps  no  age  has  ever  been  so  qualified  to 
measure  the  tremendous  nature  of  this  claim  as  our  own  ; 


IV.]         The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self -Consciousness       107 

when  the  natural  and  family  affections  are  prized  and 
praised  as  they  never  were  before ;  when  the  whole  of 
literature  is  dominated  by  them,  through  minor  poets  and 
novelists;  and  when  the  whole  of  Christianity  is  often 
expressed,  and  taken  to  be  exhaustively  expressed,  in 
their  terms  as  a  pitiful  fatherhood  and  a  loving  sonship. 
Again,  what  does  he  say  has  the  blessing  at  the  last  ? 
It  is  not  kindness  to  children  (or  to  childlike  believers), 
nor  to  the  poor,  but  their  treatment  in  his  name. 
Philanthropy,  indeed,  means  much  in  the  great  judg- 
ment ;  but  not  for  itself,  not  as  humanity,  but  because 
it  was  done  to  him  really,  however  unwittingly.  His 
reward  was  to  those  who  made  themselves  hated, 
not  for  their  religion  but  for  him.  Men's  final  relation 
to  God  would  depend  not  on  moral  conduct  but  on 
whether  Jesus  owned  or  disowned  them  as  true  confessors 
of  him.  But  this  is  surely  justification  by  faith.  Or 
can  Jesus  have  forgotten  himself  for  a  moment  in  the 
interest  of  theology  ?  Or  has  some  Pauline  editor  put 
the  words  into  Christ's  mouth  ?  I  have  never  heard  that 
this  has  been  suggested.  But  I  do  note  that  even 
Johannes  Weiss,  in  his  commentary,  is  carried  by  such 
a  passage  beyond  the  human  personality  to  its  divine 
content.  Such  an  identification  by  Jesus  of  his  own 
work  with  God's  one  business  with  history,  of  his  own 
world-role  with  God's,  leads  Weiss  to  say  that  "  Jesus  is 
here  thinking  no  longer  of  his  human  personality  but  of 
the  divine  content  whose  vessel  he  is''  (on  Mark  viii.  38). 
We  recall  the  other  well  known  passages  where  Jesus 
considers  himself  the  Judge  of  the  world.  While  his 
promise  of  his  presence  in  the  midst  of  any  group  met  in 
His  name  was  something  that  a  Jew  associated  only  with 
God.     His   exercise   of   forgiveness,    again,    all    the  by- 


io8  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

standers  understood,  and  resented,  as  infringing  the 
prerogative  of  God.  If  it  be  said  that  forgiveness  for 
Christ's  sake  is  not  in  the  Gospels,  but  only  a  direct  for- 
giveness from  God,  it  must  be  answered  that  that  is  not 
so.  It  is  true  that  forgiveness  for  the  sake  of  Christ 
crucified  is  not  expressed  in  the  Gospels ;  but,  apart 
from  all  disputes  about  the  meaning  of  '  Thy  sins  are 
forgiven  thee,'  it  is  not  disputable  that  it  is  always  for- 
giveness conditioned  by  faith  in  Jesus,  and  repentance 
before  his  great  and  condescending  personality,  whose 
mighty  humility  the  cross  did  but  gather  up  and  con- 
summate. It  was  a  forgiveness  he  knew  to  be  guaranteed 
by  something  peculiar  to  himself.  The  kingdom,  more- 
over, is  promised  only  to  those  that  attach  themselves 
to  his  person.  If  it  is  not  expressly  forgiveness  for 
the  cross's  sake,  it  is  forgiveness  for  Christ's  sake. 
But  in  the  light  of  after  events  and  experiences  we 
see  what  that  meant.  We  see  the  whole  Christ.  It 
meant  for  the  sake  of  one  who  had  the  cross  latent  in  his 
very  nature,  and  that  not  only  as  his  fate  but  as  his  con 
summation  (for  the  cross  did  not  simply  befall  Christ). 
It  was  for  the  sake  of  one  whose  person  never  came  to 
its  full  self,  or  took  full  effect,  but  in  the  cross— even  as 
he  came  to  earth  altogether  by  a  supramundane  sacrifice, 
and  in  the  exercise  of  a  cross  assumed  before  the  founda- 
tion of  the  world.*  Further,  He  repeals  at  will  parts  of  the 
divinest  thing  they  knew— the  Mosaic  Law  (Mat.  xix.  3). 
He  declares  that  the  supreme  organ  of  God's  will  on 
earth,  Israel, — God's  Son  Israel,  will  be  wrecked  upon 
its  attitude  to  him,  and  replaced  by  foreigners.  In 
regard  to  the  Pharisees,  again,  he  uses  not  so  much  the 

*See  the  closing  lectures. 


IV.]        The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self -Consciousness       109 

fierce  bitterness  of  the  mere  Carlylese  critic  as  the  awful 
severity  of  the  supreme  Judge.  In  the  whole  region  of 
revelation,  indeed,  he  carries  himself  in  a  sovereign  and 
final  way.  And  if  it  be  said  that  even  he  always  treated 
his  sovereignty  as  conferred,  what  is  that  so  long  as  it  was 
eternally  conferred  ?  What  is  it  but  the  principle  of  an 
Eternal  Son  in  eternal  generation  from  the  Father. 
Neither  he  nor  his  have  claimed  that  he  was  an  inde- 
pendent and  rival  potentate  in  heaven,  but  that  he  was 
and  is  a  personal  and  eternal  pole  in  Godhead.  Is  it  a 
misuse  of  the  Great  Invitation,  'Come  unto  me,  etc' 
(Mat.  xi.  28)  to  treat  it,  in  the  way  Christendom  has 
done,  as  opening  for  every  age  alike  an  eternal  refuge 
in  him,  and  not  merely  as  an  appeal  to  the  harassed 
contemporaries  of  his  earthly  life  ?  Or  did  he  mean, 
not  '  I  am  the  secret,'  but  only  '  the  secret  is  with  me'  ? 
Could  any  man  keep  himself  out  of  his  Gospel  of  a 
Father  if  he  had  that  consciousness  of  moral  and  spiritual 
perfection,  of  absolute  holiness,  of  room  for  the  race,  which 
never  deserted  Jesus  in  his  darkest  hour?  He  never  did, 
or  felt  he  did,  anything  but  the  will  of  the  Father,  which 
will  indeed  he  was.  And  he  looked  forward  to  his  life 
and  all  its  ministry  being  consummated  in  a  death  which 
was  to  open  a  new  relation  between  God  and  man,  and 
to  set  up  the  new  and  universal  covenant,  whose  day  had 
long  ago  been  foreseen  by  Jeremiah,  his  nearest  counter- 
part in  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  culmination  of  its 
content.  I  venture  to  think  that  these  are  all  features 
which,  though  they  have  not  all  been  unchallenged,  yet 
are  challenged  by  a  criticism  which  is  not  purely  historic, 
but  which  has  made  up  its  mind  before  on  other  grounds, 
on  grounds  of  philosophic,  dogmatic,  or  anti-dogmatic 
dogmatism. 


110  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

§         §         § 
But  can  you  possibly  explain  such  a  Christ  except  by 

some  Christology  ?  Can  a  mere  psychology  with  its 
subjective  type  of  Christianity  explain  such  a  Christ  ?  Is 
the  absence  of  a  Christology  in  the  Synoptics  not  the 
assumption  of  much  '  advanced  '  criticism,  instead  of  its 
result?  Can  it  be  that  advanced  criticism  means  criti- 
cism in  advance  of  the  facts  ?  Is  it  pure  historicism  that 
is  at  work  here?  Is  it  strict  evidential  science?  Is  it 
not  the  philosopher  in  the  historian  that  does  the  criticism 
when  we  are  told  that  Christ  was  not  essential  to  his 
own  Gospel  ?  Not  that  I  object  on  principle  to  a  parti 
pris.  Pure  historical  criticism  is  impossible  in  the  case 
of  Jesus.  I  would  only  urge  that  the  prejudice  should  be 
faith  and  not  dogma,  personal  faith  and  not  negative 
dogma.  I  would  urge  that  the  prejudice  should  be 
positive  religion  and  not  negative  theology.  Can  such 
a  record  be  adequately,  sympathetically  handled  with- 
out faith  in  the  person  ?  Must  you  not  trust  him 
ere  he  shall  seem  worthy  of  your  trust?  Can  you 
sift  and  win  the  essential  thing  out  of  these  docu- 
ments by  scientific  research  alone  ?  Criticism  of  such  a 
story  is  not  possible  without  a  side  taken,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  either  in  faith,  unfaith,  or  philosophy  ?  Is 
not  every  estimate  of  Jesus  a  confession  of  faith,  rich  or 
poor?  Does  he  not  reveal  every  man,  judge  him,  and 
place  him?  In  the  case  of  a  figure  like  Jesus,  with 
such  an  appeal  to  the  soul,  does  an  absolutely  scientific 
critic  exist,  one  perfectly  disinterested,  who  has 
completely  succeeded  in  excluding  every  ray  of  light 
likely  to  discolour  a  portrait  wholly  and  solely  his- 
torical ?  If  the  belief  of  Christendom  has  been 
deflected  by    the  apostolic    version    of   Christ,  is    there 


IV,]        The  Testimony  of  Chrisfs  Self -Consciousness       iii 

nothing  which  deflects,  to  right  or  left,  the  version 
of  the  modern  critic  ?  The  mischievous  work  of  the 
apostles  on  the  genuine  human  Christ  has  been  compared 
by  some  critics  to  that  of  those  speculative  monks  who 
thought  nothing  of  covering  a  priceless  Greek  classic 
with  a  palimpsest  of  medieval  dreams.  Is  it  quite  absurd, 
when  we  see  the  work  of  some  of  the  critics,  to  recall  the 
treatment  of  Shakespeare  by  Colley  Gibber,  or  of 
"  Paradise  Lost  "  by  Bentley  ? 

§  §         § 

I  have  asked  if  Jesus  was  in  his  own  doctrine  of  God, 
in  his  supreme  revelation  of  God  as  Father  ?  Now  it  is 
not  well  to  stake  any  great  doctrine  upon  a  single  text, 
or,  indeed,  on  several.  But,  nevertheless,  there  are  texts 
and  texts.  And  a  well-assured  saying  of  Christ  himself 
about  himself  is  more  than  a  proof  text.  As  the  expres- 
sion of  his  own  experience  it  is  one  of  those  documents, 
like  an  imperial  rescript,  which  are  no  mere  documents, 
but  are  themselves  part  of  the  history.  They  are  instru- 
ments and  not  mere  evidences.  And  there  is  one  text 
which  every  critical  effort  has  failed  to  shake,  except  for 
those  who  come  to  it  with  their  minds  made  up  so  to 
think  of  Christ  that  it  could  not  be  true  on  any 
evidence.  Harnack  accepts  it  in  the  main.  I  allude  to  the 
familiar  passage  already  named,  Mat.  xi.  27  :  "  No  man 
knoweth  the  son  but  the  father,  neither  knoweth  any 
man  the  Father  but  the  son,  and  he  to  whom  the  Son 
willeth  to  reveal  him."  Upon  this  passage  alone  I  should 
be  ready  to  base  my  own  conviction  that  Christ  believed 
his  sonship  to  be  unique  in  kind.  And  I  am  driven  farther 
by  it — to  his  prc-existence.  I  do  believe  that  that  idea 
was  in  Christ's  consciousness  here  ;  though  it  may  be 
hard,  on   the  one  hand,  to  adjust   it  to  other   phases  of 


112  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

that  consciousness,  and  though  we  cannot,  on  the  other 
hand,  suppose  he  had  in  his  thought  later  trinitarian 
categories. 

I  make  no  direct  use  in  this  connexion  of  the  prior 
phrase,  about  all  things  having  been  delivered  to  him  of 
the  Father ;  because  I  agree  with  Wellhausen  and  others 
who  interpret  it  not  of  all  power  but  of  all  the  knowledge, 
the  revelation,  needful  for  his  task.  "All  I  need  to 
know  for  my  task  has  been  taught  me  by  the  Father." 
But  I  would  make  this  use  of  the  words — to  show  that 
when  he  said  the  unique  knowledge  of  the  Father  was  the 
great  gift  that  was  directly  his,  his  for  his  Father's 
work,  he  believed  that  it  was  his  alone  ;  that  no  one  was 
for  him  with  the  Father  what  he  was  for  all ;  and  that, 
therefore,  his  own  word  must  be  the  last  word  on  his 
relation  to  the  Father.  Whatever  he  thought  of  his 
relation  to  the  Father  and  the  Father's  work  with  men 
was,  in  his  judgment,  given  him  of  God,  and  there  was 
no  more  to  be  said. 

What,  then,  did  he  think  of  that  relation  ?  What  was 
taught  him  by  the  Father  about  his  Sonship  ?  Surely 
the  Father  and  the  Son  here  are  both  absolute  terms. 
Certainly  it  is  so  with  the  Father.  The  phrases  are 
"  the  Father  "  and  "  the  Son."  It  is  not  my  father.  The 
Father  in  his  holy  Eternity  is  meant.  And  with  such  a 
Father  the  Son  is  correlative.  Whatever  is  meant  by  the 
Father  has  its  counterpart  in  the  Son.  If  the  one  is  an 
eternal  Father  the  other  is  a  co-eternal  Son.  There  is 
all  the  fulness  in  the  expression,  "  the  Son,"  that  there 
is  in  "the  Father."  Moreover,  it  is  said  here  that  our 
human  knowledge  of  the  Father,  as  distinct  from  sur- 
mises, analogies,  or  deductions  about  a  Father — 
any  knowledge   which  is    comparable    in    certainty   to 


IV.]         The  Testimony  of  Chrisfs  Self -Consciousness       113 

Christ's  own — is  derived  from  Christ,  and  is  entirely 
dependent  on  his  will  and  nature.  If  we  are  sons  we 
are  sons  only  in  him.  There  is  nothing  absolute  about 
our  sonship.  Is  it  reading  in  Paulinism  here,  except  in 
phrase,  when  I  say  we  are  sons  only  if  we  are  adopted 
into  sonship  ;  which  Christ  does  in  the  Father's  name, 
the  passage  says,  and  in  no  arbitrary  way,  but  on  the 
principles  which  control  his  own  filial  relation  to  God, 
and  make  him  the  one  incarnation  of  God's  holy  saving 
will.  The  Son  is  determined  in  his  choice  of  his  illumi- 
nates by  the  same  principle  as  guided  the  Father  (v.  25) 
in  his  own  case.  The  captain  of  the  elect  is  the  grand 
Elector.  There  was  an  election  of  men  by  Christ  as 
of  Christ  by  God ;  and  Christ's  election  of  men  was 
God's;  and  some  were  taught  and  some  left,  at  Christ's 
royal  choice.  He  chose  the  seekers  and  left  the 
self-contented,  filled  the  hungry  with  his  good  things 
and  sent  the  self-satisfied  empty  away.  He  had  nothing 
to  teach  those  who  knew  all  about  it,  any  more  than  he 
had  healing  for  those  who  felt  whole.  He  passed  by  the 
philosophers  and  the  healthy-minded,  and  spoke  to  the 
sick  waiters  for  Israel's  salvation.  And  he  is  himself  a 
like  mystery  to  men  with  the  Father.  His  person  is 
beyond  all  psychology,  and  its  key  is  in  God's  hands 
alone.  The  Son  is  lighted  up,  is  revealed  only  by  the 
Father,  as  the  Father  by  the  Son  (Mat.  xvi.  17).  Flesh 
and  blood  does  not  reveal  the  truth  about  him,  but  only 
the  Father  in  heaven.  The  son  is  so  unique  in  his  kind 
that  only  God's  revelation  can  read  him  or  teach  him. 
At  his  inmost  he  is  as  much  of  a  mystery  as  the  Father 
is.  Yet  he  gives  himself  to  be  known.  And  this  know- 
ledge of  him  is  a  new  religion.  To  know  the  God  in  Christ 
is  another   religion   from    that  which    knows    God  only 


114  ^^'^  Persofi  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

through  Christ.  It  is  the  new  and  only  way  to  know 
God  as  religion  must  know  him.  With  the  person  of 
Jesus  comes  a  new  religion,  of  which  he  is  the  object, 
and  not  simply  the  subject  as  its  saint  or  sage. 

The  son,  then,  knows  the  Father  with  the  same  know- 
ledge as  the  Father  has  of  himself.  And  it  was  a 
knowledge  which  was  not  transferable.  The  power  that 
Christ  gave  was  the  power  to  know  the  Father  in  him  ; 
it  was  not  the  power  to  know  the  Father  as  he  did. 
It  was  the  power  to  know  the  Godhead  of  the  Father 
by  the  incarnate  Godhead  of  the  Son. 

§         §         § 
Do  you  complain  that  to  speak  of  the  son  knowing  the 

father  with  the  Father's  own  knowledge  of  himself  is  to 

introduce   theological    intricacy   into   a    matter  of   filial 

faith  ?     Let  me  venture  to  answer  (after  reminding  you 

that  the  words   are    Christ's),  first,    that   if  filial    faith 

comes    to    possess    our    whole    being     the    theological 

intelligence  on  such  matters  will  no  longer  slumber.     A 

filial   faith    is   a    theological    faith.     Second,    that   it    is 

Christian  teachers  that  we  have  in  view ;  who,  for  the 

sake  of  their  own  certainty  and  the  powerful  simplicity 

that  goes  with  certainty,  might  well  be  less  afraid  of  faith's 

mental  Hinterland  than  they  are.    And,  third,  that  they 

should  be  ready  with  some  answer  to  those  of  their  flock 

who  ask  for  an  interpretation  of  passages  like  i  Cor.  ii.,  or 

who  raise  the  question  of  two  Gods,   Father  and  Son. 

The    chapter    I    have    just    named    is    classic   for   the 

psychology  of  inspiration  and  its  value.     I  have  more  to 

say  about  its  authority  in  the  next  lecture.    But  I  point  out 

here  that  Paul  makes  a  tremendous  claim  for  the  Church's 

knowledge  of  God  as  concentrated   in  the  knowledge  of 

the   apostles.     He    says   it    does    not    rest    on    human 


IV.]        The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self-Cunsciotisness        115 

thought — neither  upon  logical  inference,  the  divination 
of  genius,  nor  the  impressive  speculation  of  philosophy. 
All  these  are  more  or  less  "thrown  out"  at  God, 
What  we  have,  he  says,  is  the  very  truth  given  of  God. 
Nay,  we  share  in  the  self  certainty  of  God,  It  was  an 
immense  thing  to  say — a  thing  as  vast  as  when  it  is 
preached  that  God  by  His  Grace  and  His  Spirit  includes 
us  in  His  love  for  His  eternal  and  holy  Son.  And  if  it 
was  not  true  it  was  a  huge  and  fantastic  delusion  which 
must  discredit  all  apostolic  witness.  How  could  Paul 
possibly  rise  to  such  a  statement  ?  He  did  not  rise  ;  he 
was  lifted.  He  was  entered  and  seized  by  the  Spirit. 
On  these  great  central  matters  of  faith  not  he  spoke  but 
Christ  spoke  in  him — as,  at  his  height,  he  knew  it  was 
not  he  that  lived  his  life  of  faith  but  Christ  that  lived  in 
him.*  "  We  have  the  mind  of  Christ,"  the  theology  of 
Christ,  Christ's  theology.  We  think  and  know,  on  these 
things,  as  Christ  did  and  does.  And  Christ  ?  Christ  is  a 
part  of  the  consciousness  of  God.  Follow  the  passage  up. 
Paul  uses  the  psychological  analogy  of  our  self-conscious- 
ness. Man,  he  says,  made  in  God's  image,  has  the 
marvellous  power  of  being  at  once  the  thinker  and  the 
object  of  thought,  of  facing  himself,  of  observing  him- 
self, of  understanding  his  own  understanding,  of  re- 
porting on  himself.  And  this  because  he  is  a  living 
Spirit.  Who  knoweth  a  man  but  the  Spirit,  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  man  which  is  in  him.f  His  conscious- 
ness   is    a    self-consciousness,  which    is    also    the    only 

•This  no  more  implie'l  infallibility  in  every  statement  than  it  did 
impeccability  in  every  act.  I3iit  it  did  imply  central  truth  as  it  did 
central  and  subduin«  righteousness 

t  Spirit  is  here  used  as  what  makes  man  man,  quite  differently  from  its 
usual  sense  with  Paul  as  the  specific  gift  of  new  life  which  makes  a 
Christian  a  Christian. 


ii6  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

means  of  our  knowing  him.  So  also  God  knows  him- 
self— by  his  Spirit.  Now  the  Lord  Christ  is  that 
Spirit.  Christ  is  part  of  the  consciousness  of  Godhead. 
And  as  no  man  can  read  our  interior  till  we  utter  our- 
selves, till  our  own  spirit  report,  so  we  cannot  know 
God  except  by  his  own  Spirit— His  Word  (as  John  calls 
it),  His  Christ  (as  Paul  calls  it).  God  knows  Himself  by 
the  Spirit.  We  know  God  by  that  Spirit  issuing  as  a 
Word.  We  know  Him  by  the  Spirit  by  which  he  knows 
himself — by  that  Spirit  living  in  Christ  as  its  Word, 
knowing  God  by  God's  self-knowledge,  and  entering  us, 
by  Christ,  with  the  same  supernatural  knowledge.  The 
rest  may  reason,  and  welcome ;  but  we  of  the  Spirit 
know.  Christ  witnesses  in  us  of  his  unity  of  being  with 
the  Father,  when  we  pursue  the  faith  that  changes  us 
from  death  to  life. 

So  the  great  passage  of  Paul  must  be  expounded.  So 
he  and  his  believed.  We  must  then  make  a  choice 
between  the  belief  that  he  was  profoundly,  superhumanly 
right,  or  that  he  was  learnedly  and  speculatively  mad,  as 
Festus  decided  before  us.  The  theology  of  the  extreme 
critics  goes  with  Festus.     So  little  is  it  "new." 

I  put  it,  then,  that  Christ  uttered  these  words  of 
Matthew,  and  that  what  they  mean  is  what  I  have  said. 

This  is,  perhaps,  the  nearest  approach  made  by  Jesus 
in  the  synoptics  to  calling  himself  directly  the  Son  of 
God  in  the  special  sense.  It  is  the  4th  Gospel  in  mice. 
The  idea  of  an  Eternal  Father  is  unthinkable  without  an 
•  Eternal  Son  of  equal  personal  reality  and  finality. 
And,  little  as  Jesus  troubled  himself  with  what  was 
thinkable  or  unthinkable,  how  can  we  deny  that  that 
idea  underlies  his  words  and  gives  their  full  meaning.  An 
Eternal  Father  must  have  an  Eternal  Son.      The  Father 


IV.]         The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self -Consciousness       117 

from  before  the  foundation  of  the  world  has  his  vis-a-vis 
in  a  co-eternal  Son.  And  Jesus  believed  himself  to  be 
that  Son  ;  else  surely  he  would  have  confessed  some 
religious  relation  to  him.  If  he  was  not  that  Son,  a 
relation  to  such  a  Son  would  have  been  part  of  his 
religion.  But  no  Son,  apart  from  himself,  had  any 
place  in  his  religious  world.  So  that  the  passage  in 
Matthew  is  almost  as  clear  as  if  Christ  had  said  in 
words,  what  he  did  say  in  effect  often,  but  never  so 
nearly  as  here,  "  I  am  that  Son."  He  was  thus  central 
to  his  own  Gospel.  But  his  was  never  the  egoist's  way  of 
saying  so.  He  never  said,  for  instance,  in  so  many  words 
that  he  was  the  Messiah ;  but  he  spoke  and  acted  as  only 
Messiah  could.  And  so  he  taught  the  one  Father  as 
only  the  one  Son  could.  He  taught  a  Son  as  unique  as 
the  Father.  To  acknowledge  that  Christ  taught  the 
Eternal  Father  is,  in  the  presence  of  such  a  passage 
as  this,  to  acknowledge  also  that  he  knew  himself,  in 
that  hour  at  least,  to  be  the  Eternal  Son  that  a  real 
Fatherhood  in  Eternity  demands.  In  recognising  the 
substantial  force  of  this  passage  Harnack  is  far  separated 
from  the  extreme  critics,  whom  he  describes  as  the 
victims  of  their  own  subjectivity. 

Yet  the  object  of  life  is  not  to  strive  for  a  belief  in  the 
co-eternity  of  the  Son,  but  to  find  in  Christ,  as  the 
living  Saviour,  that  which  makes  nothing  less  than  such 
a  belief  a  need,  a  refuge,  and  a  joy  of  the  soul. 

§         §         § 
Observe  at  another  angle  the  argument  that  is  so  freely 

used  by  many  who  carry  Harnack  whither  he  would  not. 

Jesus  came  chiefly  to  preach;     Wiiat  he  left  on  earth 

was  doctrine  of  an  impressive  kind.     It  is  not  made  out 

that  he  was  in  his  own  doctrine.    Therefore,  the  apostles 


Il8  The  Person  and  Fhice  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

who,  without  question,  put  his  person  in  front  of  his 
doctrine  misrepresented  him  ;  and  in  their  teaching  they 
gave  us  too  Httle  of  his  speech  and  too  much  of  himself 
(or  their  version  of  him).  They  gave  too  little  of  his 
historic  principles  and  too  much  of  his  super-historic 
self.  That  is  to  say,  Jesus  was  a  preacher;  He  did  not 
put  himself  in  front  of  his  doctrine  ;  His  apostles  did 
put  him  there ;  and  in  so  far  they  are  wrong,  and  they 
misrepresent  him.     That  is  the  argument. 

There  is  a  fallacy  somewhere.  And  it  is  here.  You 
say  that  the  one  legacy  of  Jesus  was  a  doctrine  of  the 
Father,  reinforced  by  the  powerful  personality  of  the 
prophet.  Why  do  you  say  that  ?  What  entitles  you  to 
say  that  the  great  thing  Jesus  brought  the  world  was 
a  doctrine,  a  doctrine  rather  than  a  deed,  and  that  he  left 
as  his  achievement  his  principle  rather  than  his  person  ? 
You  admit  that  this  was  not  the  view  of  the  apostles,  nor 
of  the  first  Church ;  it  was  not  the  view  of  those  who 
received  whatever  legacy  he  did  leave.  You  are  coming 
to  admit  that  it  was  not  the  view  of  the  Synoptists. 
Why  do  you  say  they  were  all  of  them  wrong  ?  You 
take  your  stand  on  certain  words  of  Jesus  alone.  But 
what  entitles  you  to  do  that  ?  You  make  a  huge  assumption 
very  silently.  You  assume  that  the  words  were  his  final 
or  only  expression  of  himself,  and  gave  effect  to  all  that  was 
in  him.  Does  that  go  without  saying?  Was  it  by  his 
recorded  words  that  his  life  took  chief  or  sole  effect  ? 
Were  they  not,  though  expressions  of  his  real  self,  yet  of 
his  unfinished  self?  His  work  was  not  half  done  till  he 
died.  Why  insulate  the  words,  whose  direct  reference 
was  but  to  an  incomplete  situation,  a  raw  audience,  and 
an  inchoate  context  of  events?  The  synoptics  are  an 
apostolic  product;  why  detach  them  so  absolutely  from 


IV.]         The  Testimony  of  ChrisVs  Self -Consciousness       119 

the  other  apostolic    products    in    the  New    Testament  ? 
Why  say  that  in  these  you  have  no  commentary  from  the 
completed  Christ  on  his  own  words  and  work  ?     When  his 
life  was  over,  and  its  net  action  on  his  world  came  to  be 
realised,  then  the  apostles  had  the  full  expression  of  the 
personality,   in  whose  light   all   that    precedes    must  be 
read.     And  in  that  light  it  was  not  his  doctrine  but  his 
deed  that  arrested  his  circle,  changed  them,  and  sent  them 
out  to  change  the  world.     His  words  are    so  precious 
because  they  are  the  words  of  one  who  proved  himself  by 
his  work  alone  to  be  the  great  authority  on  himself.      Is 
it  not  the  issue  of  his  life  that  gives  weight  to  his  words 
about  himself?  With  your  emphasis  upon  his  statements 
alone,  are  you   not   in  bondage  to  the  bad    old  idea  of 
revelation,  namely,  that  it  consists  of  a  teaching  rather 
than   a   person,    of  statement    or    precept    rather  than 
act,   of  a  complete  truth  rather    than    a  finished  deed, 
of  truth  about  God  rather  than  of  God  as  truth  ?  How 
ineradicable,  how  subtle,  that  pagan,  catholic  orthodox 
fallacy    is!     Have    we    not    learned    how    much    greater 
a  person  is  than  a  principle  or  a  truth,  and  by  how  much 
Christ's  total  work  was  his  greatest  word,  in  whose  light 
we  read  all  his  words.     In  the  light  of  his  cross  we  see 
the  most  wondrous  depths  in  his  law.     F'or  instance,  "  I 
am  not  sent  but  unto  the  lost   sheep   of   the  house   of 
Israel."     When  the  cross  broke   open    Christ's    univer- 
sality these  words  contain  not  a  final  truth  but  a  great 
providential  scheme  at  a  penultimate  stage.     Do  we  not 
yet  understand  that  the  nature  of  true  revelation  is  that 
it  should  come  by  historic  facts  and  deeds  rather  than  by 
truths,  even   the  truths  uttered  at  a  stage  by  the  chief 
actors  in  the  deed  ?     Whether  Christ  taught  himself  or 
not  he  gave  himself,  in  a  lifelong  act  as  great  as  his  person 


120  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

and  ascending  to  his  cross.  He  left  this  gift  as  his  legacy 
to  his  Church  and  world.  And  what  was  the  greatest 
effect  of  his  gift  to  the  Church?  It  was  to  open  their 
eyes  to  see  that  his  gift  of  himself  to  man  was  so  great 
because  of  his  prior  and  greater  gift  of  himself  to  God, 
his  offering  of  himself  for  men  to  God,  which  was  always 
the  supreme  giving  with  him.  And  hence  he  was  treated 
by  those  who  first  received  the  complete  gift  as  no  mere 
impressive  personality  to  be  remembered  with  reverence, 
but  as  a  Saviour  to  be  received  by  faith,  and  duly  honoured 
by  nothing  less  than  worship.  God  alone  could  duly  hallow 
God  in  man.  It  was  only  after  his  death  that  the  full 
truth  could  be  told  because  only  then  did  the  full  truth 
exist,  because  his  death  was  its  creation.  Only  in 
the  completion  of  the  cross  did  Christ  become  the  object 
of  Gospel  preaching,  because  only  there  was  he  perfected 
and  final  as  Redeemer.  It  was  not  till  then  that  his 
disciples  came  to  worship  him.  And  what  one 
observes  is  this,  that  those  who  have  found  themselves 
in  his  death  cannot  hear  enough  about  his  life ;  but 
those  who  find  their  account  only  in  his  life  are  soon 
satiated  with  interpretations  of  his  death.  And  they 
even  sink  to  the  level  of  Pfleiderer,  and  those  who  dilute 
his  statement  that,  "The  permanent  thing  in  the  Christian 
faith  of  redemption  is  the  moral  ideal  of  the  self-redemp- 
tion of  society  through  the  solidarity  of  the  helpful  and 
exalting  love  of  its  members."  That  is,  all  kind  and  help- 
ful people  are  redeemers  in  the  same  sense  as  Christ. 
But  for  us  it  is  his  death  that  makes  Christ  unique.  His 
death  gives  us  command  of  the  whole  Christ  as  is  not 
given  us  by  his  life  or  his  words.  He  was  perfected  only 
in  his  conquest  of  death  ;  and  only  in  that  consummation 
do  we  see  him  clear  and  see  him  whole.  And  only  when  the 


IV.]         The  Testimony  of  Chrisfs  Self -Consciousness       121 

deed  was  done  was  it  of  any  use  to  talk  of  it,  even  to  his 
own.  His  consummation  there  released  the  spirit  by 
which  alone  he  could  be  understood.  Like  the  great- 
est geniuses,  he  had  to  create  the  spirit  that  understood 
him.  The  Spirit  was  released  for  men  by  the  same  act 
as  released  men  for  the    Spirit. 

§         §         § 
We  should  take  more  seriously  the  growth  of  Jesus. 

We  are  all  agreed  that  Jesus  grew  in  obedience,  learning 

it  by  the  things  that  he  suffered.     He  was  not  simply  an 

event  in  history;  he  had  himself  a  history,  which  is  the 

moral  marrow  of  all  history.     His  natural  consciousness 

grew,   and  the  content  of  it  grew,  as  he  grew  from  child 

to   man,    and   came  to  know  the  world.     His  spiritual 

consciousness,    his   sense   of  sonship,    also   grew,    as  he 

settled  the  conflicts  that  beset  him  about  his  Messiahship. 

Is  it  too  much  to   press  into  the  deeper  meaning  and 

condition  of  such  growing  obedience,  and  to  say  that  as 

he  did  the  deeper  will  he  knew  the  deeper  doctrine,  his 

grasp   of   sonship  also  grew.     The  growing  form  of  his 

obedience  must  have  had  for  its  concomitant  a  growth  in 

the  power  of  reading    the    meaning  of  his  experiences; 

yea,  a  growth     not    only  of    his    consciousness    but  of 

his    personality,    (his     subjective     personality,    not    his 

objective    relation    to    God)    a    growth    in    which    his 

deepening  will  met  his  deepening  fate  ?     And  must  we 

not  go  forward   on  that  line   to  say  that  it  was  only  by 

death  that  he  himself  took  the  full  measure  of  his  death, 

and  conveyed   that   interpretation  to  his  disciples  ?     It 

was    only    in    victorious    death,     (with    its    obverse    of 

resurrection,)     that    he    was    perfected,    found     himself, 

'  arrived,'   ripened,  and   was  determined  not  as  Son  but 

as  Son  in  power  (Rom.  i.  4).      It  was  not  till  he  died  that 


122  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

he  possessed  his  whcle  soul,  came  to  his  own,  entered  on 
all  he  really  was,  was  exalted  to  his  true  heaven,  and 
could  teach  about  himself  things  impossible  before 
His  teaching  during  life  was  the  teaching  appropriate  to 
the  national  stage  of  his  universal  work,  to  the  pro- 
visional stage  of  his  personal  task.  It  is  immaterial  at 
this  point  to  ask  whether  this  great  interpretation 
through  death  was  conveyed  by  him  to  his  disciples  in  a 
"gospel  of  the  40  days,"  or  by  his  inspiration,  from  behind 
the  veil,  of  men  like  Paul,  in  whom  he  lived  more  really 
than  they  did  in  themselves. 

The  question  is  often  asked,  why  the  idea  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  disappears  outside  the  Synoptics  ? 
Have  we  not  here  one  answer  ?  Is  it  not  because  of  the 
essential  change  created  in  the  whole  situation  by  the 
finished  work,  by  the  perfecting  of  Christ,  by  his  coming 
into  his  kingdom,  by  his  identification  with  the  kingdom, 
and  its  real  establishment  in  his  redemptive  triumph  ? 
The  King  is  the  Kingdom.  To  be  "  in  Christ "  is  to  be 
in  the  Kingdom.  The  historic  idea  becomes  the  mystic 
reality.  The  future  becomes  the  present.  The  apostolic 
preaching  of  Christ  therefore  took  the  place  of  Christ's 
own  preaching  of  the  kingdom.  He  was  now  identi- 
fied with  the  Kingdom.  How  could  that  have  happened 
if  his  teaching  or  memory  had  been  his  real  legacy, 
if  he  was  not  more  than  all  he  said,  and  his  manner 
of  death  more  than  all  his  method  of  address  ? 
Nothing  in  his  life  served  the  kingdom  like  his  manner 
of  leaving  it.  The  Gospel  of  Christ  replaced  the  Gospel 
of  the  Kingdom,  because  by  his  death  he  became  the 
kingdom,  because  he  became  all  that  the  kingdom 
contained,  he  was  the  "truth"  of  the  Kingdom,  and  his  per- 
sonal perfecting  was  ipso  facto  and  pari  passu  the  securing 


IV.]         The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self-Consciousness       123 

ofthe  Kingdom.  Like  "  Messiah,"  the  Kingdom  was  an 
Old  Testament  phrase,  which  served  to  enclose  what  he 
brought  in  himself;  and  the  pitcher,  the  phrase,  was 
broken  as  the  true  light  shone.  The  testimony  of  Jesus 
is  the  Spirit  of  the  Kingdom.  The  Kingdom  was  great 
with  him.  The  Gospel  of  the  Kingdom  was  Christ  in 
essence;  Christ  was  the  Gospel  ofthe  Kingdom  in  power. 
The  Kingdom  was  Christ  in  a  mystery ;  Christ  was  the 
publication,  the  establishment  of  the  Kingdom.  To 
bring  the  kingdom  preach  the  King.  He  was  the  truth 
of  his  own  greatest  Gospel.  It  is  wherever  he  is.  To 
have  him  is  to  ensure  it.  He  sparkles  in  his  Gospel 
of  the  Kingdom ;  but  the  Kingdom  shines  out  full  and 
final  in  his  perfecting,  in  his  finished  soul  and  eternal 
whole. 

§  §  § 
There  is  another  way  of  putting  the  matter  (suggested 
by  Kahler)  which  does  not  always  have  due  attention. 
Why  should  we  insulate  the  Synoptics  as  the  sole  source  of 
our  knowledge  of  what  Jesus  wished  taught  as  his  gospel  ? 
He^eft  some  bequest;  was  it  his  teaching?  If  it  was, 
did  he  make  the  careful  provision  he  ought  to  have  done 
for  the  preservation  in  purity  of  a  gift  so  supreme  ?  Or 
for  any  correct  record  of  his  life's  story  ?  Was  it  either 
his  life  or  teaching  that  was  understood  to  be  his  grand 
bequest  by  those  he  left  ?  Did  he  think  of  leaving  with 
them  anything  but  himself,  as  cross  and  resurrection  had 
made  him — himself  and  his  speedy  return  ?  If  his  words 
were  the  treasure,  what  foresight  did  he  use  to  anticipate 
and  avert  that  huge  misrepresentation  of  him  and  his 
doctrine  which,  we  are  told,  began  almost  at  once,  and 
which  he  would  have  been  very  dull  as  a  teacher  not  to 
think  possible  in  ordinary  conditions?     Did  he  ever  erect 


124  ^^^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [r.  ect. 

the  Galilean  ministry  which  fills  the  Synoptics  into  the 
touchstone  ?  If  he  did,  where  is  it  so  said  ?  And  why 
was  it  not  at  once  put  into  fixed  and  authoritative  shape 
to  meet  the  Apostolic  doctrine  that  was  doing  his  memory 
such  mischief  ?  If  he  did  mean  the  matter  of  his  ministry 
to  be  the  test,  why  was  the  memory  of  it  such  a  failure  for 
the  purpose  of  arresting  its  perversion  ?  Why  did  not 
the  very  earliest  Church  in  its  mission  work  confine  itself 
to  carrying  on  his  sententious  style,  his  moral  precepts, 
and  his  parabolic  form  ?  Why  did  they  not  adhere 
closely  to  comment  on  his  words  and  deeds,  as  all  the 
pupils  of  a  great  master  did  with  his  TrapaSoo-ts,  or  tra- 
dition, at  that  day  ?  Even  James,  it  is  remarked,  the 
nearest  in  tone  to  the  Synoptics,  does  not  repeat  their 
teaching,  but  he  calls  for  faith  in  the  Lord  of  Glory,  and 
a  life  accordingly.  What  ground  have  we  for  saying  that 
if  the  Apostles  had  been  true  to  the  intention  of  Jesus 
they  would  have  prolonged  and  expanded  his  teaching 
and  beneficence,  instead  of  going  off  upon  a  theological 
Gospel  ?  It  is  more  than  ever  wonderful  that  they  did 
not  prolong  his  mode  of  instruction  if  we  follow  the  view 
of  so  many  and  hold  that  there  was  little  original  in  his 
teaching,  little  beyond  what  could  be  drawn,  and  was 
drawn,  from  the  Old  Testament,  or  Judaic  tradition. 
To  Jews  brought  up  like  the  Apostles  that  fact  would 
only  have  given  the  more  weight  to  Christ's  words,  and 
deepened  their  obligation  to  continue  the  new  impulse  he 
had  infused  into  the  old  truths. 

Does  it  not  all  point  to  this,  that  the  real  legacy  of 
Jesus  was  himself — the  impression  of  the  personality 
which  gave  to  his  *  occasional  ',  and  sometimes  transitory, 
teaching  its  real  worth.  Nay,  impression  is  not  the 
word.     His  great  legacy  was  an  achievement.     The  mere 


[V.]         The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self-Consciousness       125 

impression  evaporated  as  disciples  forsook  him  and  fled. 
It  was  a  new  life,  a  new  creation,  that  he  effected.  Some- 
thing happened  which  rallied  them,  and  converted  the 
fading  impression  into  living  and  justifying  faith — some- 
thing which  had  the  real  gospel,  and  the  real  gospel  power, 
in  it.  Christ  rose.  A  new  master  made  of  them  new  men. 
A  new  Christ  turned  them  from  disciples  into  apostles. 
The  Spirit  came.  The  cross  opened.  These  things 
were  what  made  the  Church,  and  not  the  teaching  oi 
Jesus.  That  teaching  was  only  preserved  from  oblivion 
by  the  existence  of  a  Church  founded  on  another  base, 
on  an  atoning  salvation  which  alone  gave  the  Church  its 
living  interest  in  the  records  of  the  Saviour,  and  gave  to 
his  words  their  authority.  The  gospels  were  written  by 
and  for  people  who  were  made  Christian  by  Christ's 
death  and  resurrection  and  their  theological  meaning. 
They  were  written  to  edify  the  converts  of  the  Cross,  and 
not  to  challenge  or  correct  a  theology  of  incarnation  and 
redemption. 

§         §         § 
The  inadequacy  of  the  Synoptics  alone  is  shown  from 

another  point  of  view,  which  I  suggested  a  moment 
ago.  It  is  recognised  by  most  that  there  was  a  develop- 
ment of  some  kind  in  the  course  of  Christ's  public 
ministry.  And  it  is  admitted  by  most  that  such 
an  idea  was  not  in  the  mind  of  the  Evangelists,  that 
in  the  gospels  it  is  not  set  out,  and,  if  it  is  to  be 
traced,  it  must  be  picked  out.  It  is  more  or  less  of  a 
construction.  It  does  not  lie  on  the  face  of  the  docu- 
ments. So  much  so  that  within  my  own  memory  it  was 
thought  a  heretical  and  somewhat  hazardous  suggestion, 
due  to  wits  more  sharp  than  sound.  The  Synoptics  do 
not  offer  it,  though   they  may  be  made  to  yield  it.     But 


126  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

how  are  we  to  trace  it  ?  I  mean,  what  are  we  to  look  for 
in  that  way  ?  What  kind  of  development  shall  we  seek  ? 
What  is  the  ideal  scheme  of  growth  which  the  Gospel 
material  is  to  fill  in,  perhaps  by  some  re-arrangement  ? 
The  Gospels  themselves,  I  say,  offer  no  such  scheme. 
We  mu:t  get  it  elsewhere,  and  then  the  Gospels  will 
illustrate  it.  Where  shall  we  get  it  ?  To  what,  in  what 
respect,  are  we  to  suppose  Jesus  developed  ? 

Now,  to  these  questions  the  apostles  give  a  certain 
answer.  He  grew  as  Saviour.  He  developed  as  Re- 
deemer. He  grew  in  his  vocation  rather  than  in  his 
position,  more  even  than  in  character.  He  did  not 
become  either  the  Son  or  the  sinless.  As  the  situation 
became  more  vast,  grave,  and  tense,  there  grew  in  him 
not  only  knowledge  but  force  and  grasp  in  his  one  work. 
He  learned  a  redemptive  obedience — not  indeed  to  acquire 
its  nature,  but  to  unfold  its  form  as  the  crisis  deepened. 
Because  he  was  a  son  (his  Sonship  he  did  not  learn)  he 
learned  obedience.  It  is  not  the  acquisition  of  Sonship 
but  the  growth  of  an  incarnated  Redeemer  that  the 
Epistles  teach  us  to  look  for  in  the  Gospels,  the  process 
of  Redemption  rather  than  incarnation.  The  idea  is  con- 
densed in  Hebrews  ii.  lo,  "  to  perfect  the  captain 
of  salvation  by  sufferings."  Not  the  man  Jesus  was 
perfected  but  the  Saviour,  not  the  moral  character  so 
much  as  the  work  possible  only  to  that  character.  Here 
we  certainly  have  moral  development,  but  it  is  not  the 
increase  of  a  moral  nature  so  much  as  the  deepening 
mastery  of  a  moral  vocation.  It  is  not  the  aesthetic 
development  of  a  moral  character  of  symmetry  and 
balance,  but  the  dynamic  development  of  a  Redeemer, 
of  a  Son  of  God  in  power  which  was  at  last  determined 
in  his  resurrection.     It  is  not  so  much  a  perfect  product 


IV.]        The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self -Consciousness        127 

of  sanctification  that  we  have,  but  a  perfect  agent  of 
justification;  not  perfection  of  the  admirable  personality  — 
but  perfection  of  the  finished  work  ;  not 

"  A  soul  by  force  of  sorrows  high, 
Uplifted  to  the  purest  sky 
Of  undisturbed  Humanity  " 
(which  is  a  stoic  ideal  after  all,  as  Wordsworth's  always 
was  a  chastened  spirituality)  but  one  who  was  always 
equal  to  cope  with  each  mounting   antagonism   that  a 
Redeemer  had  to  meet.     This,  of  course,  could  only  be 
done  by  an  ethical  personality  and  its  victory  ;  but  it  is 
not  the  ethical  idea  that  is  uppermost,  but  the  evangelical, 
the   theological,    the     functional,     the   evolution    of  the 
Saviour,  rather  than  the  man,  in  so  far  as  they  are  separ- 
able.    And  it  is   not  I  who  say  they  are,  but  those  who 
lake  the  man  and  leave  the  Saviour. 

But  the  growth  that  is  traced  by  those  who  reject  the 
idea  of  redemption  as  being  something  foisted  by  the 
apostles  on  Jesus,  is  the  growth  of  such  ethical  character 
as  a  saintly  modern  man  would  be  expected  to  achieve  by 
a  sympathetic  and  scholarly  biographer.  If  the  Gospel 
material  is  to  fill  up  some  conception  of  development,  and 
the  development  is  not  that  of  a  redeemer,  it  must  be 
that  of  an  ethical  character  of  the  modern  type.  Is  it 
hard  to  choose  between  the  value  and  authority  of  the  two 
ideals  ?  If  each  is  an  importation  into  the  Synoptics, 
which  is  the  more  likely  to  do  justice  to  them — that 
favoured  by  the  founders  and  heads  of  the  Churches  that 
produced  and  used  them,  or  that  imposed  by  laborious 
scholars  living  at  a  date  so  remote  as  our  own, 
working  often  with  more  psychological  acumen  than 
personal  faith,  and  working  under  a  bias  against  apostolic 
interpretation.     Development    is    meaningless  without  a 


128  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

standard  or  principle.  And  my  contention  would  be  that 
the  apostles  represent  the  atmosphere  of  the  evangelists  ; 
that  the  apostolic  ideal  is  the  principle  of  any  development 
which  the  evangelists  may  imply  but  do  not  set  them- 
selves to  press;  and  that  any  construction  of  the  evan- 
gelists other  than  this  must  be  more  alien  and  more 
artificial.  To  set  forth  Christ  as  Redeemer  is  at  least 
more  germane  to  our  data  than  to  exhibit  him  as  the 
flower  of  spiritual  character,  which  certainly  was  not  the 
interest  of  our  sources  at  all. 

§  §  § 
Those  who  select  the  Gospels  out  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  the  Synoptics  out  of  the  Gospels,  you  perceive 
then,  do  not  stop  there.  They  sift  the  Synoptics  and 
select  from  them  a  putative  primitive  Gospel.  They 
select  the  essential  thing,  as  they  deem  it.  I  have 
asked  what  is  their  test  of  the  essential  ?  The  rest 
of  the  New  Testament,  we  have  seen,  does  offer  a 
standard  for  those  narratives.  It  is  the  evangelical, 
the  dogmatic,  Christ,  whom  the  critics  reject  ;  the 
Christ  who  is  much  more  the  object  of  faith  than 
the  subject  of  it.  And  that  is  the  test  that  the 
Church  has  used  throughout  its  deeply  experienced 
history.  Even  when  the  Bible  was  not  accepted  en  bloc, 
this  was  so.  It  was  Luther's  test  for  a  canon  within  the 
canon.  He  took  what  made  for  that  apostolic,  saving 
Christ.  And  we  all  do  as  Luther  did,  so  far.  We  all 
make  our  own  canon  within  the  canon.  We  do  not  find 
every  part  of  the  Bible  equally  authoritative  or  equally 
valuable.  We  each  select  the  passages  which  do  most 
for  us,  which  come  most  home  to  our  chief  need,  and 
the  need  we  find  unmet  elsewhere.  We  have  many 
individual  ways  of  making  that    selection,    varying    up- 


IV.]       The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self -Consciousness       129 

wards  from  literary  taste  to  evangelical  experience.     But 
when  it  has  to  be  done  on  the  scale  of  a  Church,  or  a 
science,  it  must  be  done  under  some  common  guiding  prin- 
ciple.    Now  for  the  Church's  selection  of  the  canon,  the 
guiding    principle    was     the     evangelical     principle    of 
Redemption,    the   apostolic   note.     It   was  the  witness, 
direct    or    indirect,  to    Christ    the    Redeemer,  and    not 
Christ  the  personage,  the  hero,  saint,  or  prophet.     And 
it  was  the  same  redemptive  principle  that    the  Church 
applied,  in  the    evolution   of  its   theology,    to   test    the 
heresies  of  the  right  or  of  the  left.     All  its  metaphysics 
were  so  many  inadequate  efforts  made,  in  the  greatest 
language  of  the  period,  to  secure  that    substantial   and 
final  interest  of  a  real  redemption — as  our  social  efforts 
are  made  to-day.     These  are  efforts  to  express  redemption 
in  the  inadequate  forms  of  social  re-arrangement  when 
what  we  need  is  social  re-generation.     We  need  a   re- 
formed Church  more  than  a  re-adjusted  state. 

But   if  that    redemptive    and    apostolic    principle    be 
discarded  in  selecting  from  the  select  books  the  essential 
Christ,  what  is  to  take  its  place?     What  is  the  guiding 
principle    to  be?     What    is    the   ultimate    thing,  whose 
witness  in  the  Synoptics  is  their  permanent  thing  ?     You 
say  it  is  just  spirituality,  a  deeply  humane  spirituality? 
What  do  you  mean  by  that?     Is  it  the  simple,  rational, 
natural,   continuous    relation    that  we  can   now  discern 
between  God  and  Man,  the  last  conditions  in  thought  of 
God,  man,  and  the  world  ?  But  is  that  not  Metaphysics  ? 
At  any  rate,  is  it  not   religious  psychology  ?     It  is  not  a 
historical  test   pure  and  simple  that  you  are  making  the 
norm.     It  is  often   a  metaphysical  test,  a  monistic  test, 
in  which  we  measure   religion   by  its  transfiguration  of 
our    deep,  natural,   immanent    relation  to  God  and  the 


130  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

world  based  on  identity  of  being  and  nature.  Yet  we 
were  given  to  understand  that  it  was  just  the  metaphysic 
in  the  old  creeds  that  made  the  worst  burden  of  them. 
Can  it  be  that  the  critic  who  sends  in  his  card  as  the 
representative  of  the  new  scientific  firm  is  really  the 
agent  of  the  old  metaphysical  house,  who,  after 
ruining  it,  is  starting  the  same  industry  under  en- 
tirely new  management,  in  a  fresh  place  of  business  ? 
Is  the  test  for  the  essential  thing  in  the  Gospels 
composed  of  certain  ideas,  movements,  or  sympathies, 
rising  out  of  the  continuity  of  rational  process  in  God  and 
man,  and  either  springing  up  in  the  human  mind  as  its 
natural  nexus  with  God,  or  generalised  from  the  various 
faiths  into  a  universal  philosophy  of  religion  ?  Is  general 
religiosity  the  test  of  positive  rehgion  ?  Is  the  amor- 
phous the  standard  of  the  organic  ?  Is  the  nebula  the 
measure  of  the  world,  or  the  protoplast  of  the  paragon  ? 
Is  what  we  should  naturally  expect  God  to  do  to  be  the 
measure  of  faith  in  what  he  has  done  ?  Is  that  old 
apriorism  not  dead  yet  ?  Are  we  to  begin  by  admitting 
only  what  we  consider  worthy  of  Him  ?  Is  that  what 
we  are  to  put  in  the  centre  of  Christianity,  that  and  not 
the  invasive  Word,  the  spiritual  enclave,  the  actual 
revelation,  the  pure  gift  and  person  of  Christ  in  its 
originality  and  finality,  welling  up  in  the  soul's  history 
like  a  quenchless  spring  of  living  water  in  the  bottom  of 
the  Dead  Sea?  Is  nothing  to  be  credited  to  the  Father 
of  spirits  but  what  is  allowed  by  the  instincts  of  nature's 
sweetest  child  ?  Everywhere  (it  is  said)  you  find  that  a 
good  God  forgives  upon  mere  repentance  and  confession, 
that  he  comes  in  aid  to  his  worshipper's  cry.  Our  hearts 
say  that,  the  spiritual  summary  of  the  world's  faiths  says 
that.     If  there  be  anything  said  about  Christ,  even  in 


IV.]        The  Testimony  oj  Christ's  Self -Consciousness        131 

the  New  Testament  itself,  which  contradicts  that,  it  must 
out.     If  a  holy  judge  affright  our  dreams  when  we  had 
gone  to  rest  on  a  kind  Father's  kiss,  it   is  the  nightmare 
of  a   stale   and    indigestible   creed.     If  a   mediator,  an 
atonement,  is  preached,   it  is  a  sophistication.     If  any- 
thing in  the  Gospels  points  that  way,  disallow  it.     It  is  a 
dishonour  to  the  great  and  ready  heart  of  God.     "But 
then  the  textual  or  other  evidence  ?  "     "  O,  that  is  lower 
"  criticism.     The  passage  has  spoken  blasphemy.     What 
"further  need  have  we  of  witnesses?     It  is  worthy  of 
"  death."     Is   there  anything  in  the  Godhead  of  Christ 
which  is  forbidden  by  modern  monism,  modern  evolution? 
"  Delendum  !     Such   a  Christ  is  a  foreign  body  intruded 
"  between    God   and    the   Soul.       Forgiveness    is  but  a 
"rudimentary   way   of  speaking   about  the   relation    of 
"absolute   to   finite   being;    or    it   is   but    *a   religious 
"expression  for  a  psychological  process,'  a  divine  way  of 
"speaking  of  the  healing  and  softening  effect  of  spiritual 
"  time  and  its  genial  process  upon  the  disturbed  moral 
"  consciousness.     God  is  not  angry.     Ritschl  has  settled 
"  that.      It   was   all    our    ignorance.      Salvation    means 
"getting  rid  of  the  idea  that  he  is  angry;  it  is  escaping 
"from   a  misconception   of  him,  clearing  up  a  misunder- 
"  standing,  Sanctification  is  the  art  of  learning  to  soothe 
"the  excessive  pertinacity  and  philistinism  of  conscience, 
"  putting   that    bore  into  his   place,    and    acquiring  the 
"  cachet  of  the  cultivated  suburbs  of  the  devout  soul."    O, 
it  is  all  so  able,  so  genteel,  so  dull,  so  morally  ordinary,  so 
spiritually   banal  !     I   must   allow  myself  to  quote  here 
what  one  of  the  noblest   Germans  of  them  all,  and  the 
most  religious,   says   about   the  liberal   theologians  and 
critics    of    the    hour.     Nobody    will    accuse    Herrmann 
of  orthodoxy.     He  has  been  pointing  out  that  the  liberal 


132  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

theologian  (what  we  call  the  advanced)  lacks  one  thing 
that  orthodoxy  had  and  still  has — power.     If  liberalism, 
he  says,  could  acquire  this  it  would  be  far  superior  to  the 
old  creed — if  it  could  meet  as  effectively  as  the  old  did 
man's  need  of  power  and  life.     It  would  be  better  because 
it  would  cut   adrift   much   wreckage  that   the  old    still 
drags  with   it  and  should  lose.     And  he  associates  this 
element  of  power  with  the  central  and  supernatural  place 
given  to  Christ,  both  in  history  and  in  our  private  experi- 
ence— Christ  as  the  sole  being  to  whom  the  soul  can  and 
must  absolutely  submit  as  unto  God.     "  But,"  he  says, 
"this  is  just  what  in  the  liberal   theology  you  do  not 
have.     Its  representatives  are  accomplished  experts   in 
the  appreciation  of  piety  outside   them,   but  a  piety  of 
their  own,  a  religion  of  decision,  seldom  emerges  into  the 
light  of  their  consciousness.     They  are  masters  in  the  art 
of  presenting   to   us   the   way   in   which    the   prophets 
received  the  word  of  God,  or  the  way  an  apostle's  soul 
was  filled  with  conflict  first  and  then  with  peace.     They 
can  wipe  the  dust  of  centuries  from  the  words  of  Jesus. 
Nay,  they  can  trace  for  you,  with    a  high  ardour,  his 
incomparable  spiritual  style.     But  they  seldom  show  a 
sign  of  concern  about  what  Christ  means  for  themselves. 
They  do  not  betray  that  a  personal  life  bears  down  on 
them  out  of  the  page  of  Scripture,  and,  full  and  warm, 
conquers  them  for  his  own.     If  that  were  their  concern 
they  would  at  least  be  silent  when  others  adore  him  as 
Lord  because  he  alone  compels   the  worship  from  their 
soul.     So  long  as  they  do  not  feel  that,  they  cannot  do 
the  work  of  theology,  nor  lay  for  ever  the  ghost  of  dog- 
matic controversy  when  the  old  creed  claims  that  there  is 
no  theology  but  itself.     But  in  the  Churches  of  the  Refor- 
mation the  sleeping  sense  will  yet  wake  that  religion  is 


IV.]        The  Testimony  of  Christ's  Self -Consciousness       133 

the  veracity  of  the  inmost  life  to  the  actual  situation  of 
his  soul,  and  that  Christian  religion  can  only  grow  from 
what  a  man  himself  experiences  of  the  present  reality  of 
the  person  of  Christ."     (Kultur  d.  Gegenwart  I,  630.) 

The  final  tendency  of  "advanced  theology"  is  back- 
wards. Like  Moliere's  ghost,  it  has  improved  very  much 
for  the  worse.  It  relapses  to  the  outgrown  Deism  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  That  was  a  rationalism  which 
ignored  history  ;  this  is  a  rationalism  which  deforces  it. 
And  its  great  act  of  violence  is  the  driving  of  a  fatal 
wedge  between  the  Synoptics  and  the  Epistles,  between 
the  message  of  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  of  his  Apostles. 

§         §         § 

I  should  like  to  add  a  point  which  has  often  arrested 
me,  and  one  whose  development  would  carry  us  far. 
Jesus  loved  the  Father  in  entire  obedience,  humility 
and  trust.  He  trusted  Him  when  every  human  and 
rational  reason  for  trust  was  gone.  But  yet  neither 
from  himself  nor  his  apostles  do  we  hear  any  reference 
to  his  faith — though  faith  is  the  one  link  between  him 
and  them.  The  evangelists  have  a  rich  store  of  phrases 
for  his  relation  to  God,  whom  he  heard,  saw,  knew,  etc., 
but  they  never  say  he  believed  in  God.  And  never  does 
he  say  "  Believe  in  me  as  I  in  the  Father."  The  reason 
is  that  our  faith  has  to  make  its  way  over  darkness  and 
distance,  both  in  thought  and  will,  which  never  troubled 
him.  He  no  more  confesses  his  faith  than  his  sin.  The 
religious  problem  for  him  and  us  was  not  the  same.  He 
possessed  the  certainty  and  communion  of  the  Father  in 
himself.  And  we  believe  in  the  Only  Son  as  he  believed 
in  none. 


LECTURE    V 

THE     TESTIMONY    OF    APOSTOLIC 
INSPIRATION— IN    GENERAL 


LECTURE  V 

THE    TESTIMONY   OF   APOSTOLIC    INSPIRATION — 
IN   GENERAL 

The  line  of  proof  we  follow  (if  we  may  call  it  proof,  if 
it  is  more  than  movement)  is  threefold.  We  began  by 
interrogating  the  self-consciousness  of  Christ.  But  we 
may  have  had  occasion  to  find  that  for  some  this  is 
bound  to  be  incomplete.  For,  first,  we  are  exposed  to 
the  challenge  of  the  Higher  Criticism  on  the  passages 
concerned.  And  second,  on  a  kenotic  theory,  the  self- 
consciousness  of  the  earthly  Christ  is  in  comparative 
occultation.  Hence,  we  push  forward  the  second  line  of 
works — the  New  Testament,  its  reflection  of  Christ,  and 
especially  its  inspiration  by  him.  We  are  driven  to  what 
might  be  called  his  self-consciousness  in  his  apostles. 
And  beyond  that  we  have  the  third  line,  the  line  of 
experience  in  the  soul  of  the  individual  or  the  Church. 

It  is  with  the  second  parallel  of  advance  that  we  come 
now  to  be  concerned — with  the  value  for  our  subject  of 
the  New  Testament  testimony  and  its  inspiration, 
meaning  by  that  the  apostolic  testimony.  I  do  not  refer 
here  to  the  general  faith  of  the  first  Church,  to  the  faith 
that  wrung  from  it  the  confession  and  worship  of  Jesus 
as   Christ    and   Lord.       I  have    more  in  view  than   the 

137 


138  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

impression  Jesus  produced  on  men  in  numbers.  I  do 
not  speak  of  the  New  Testament  as  the  mirror  in  which 
we  see  the  reflected  image  that  Christ  made  in  the 
Church.  I  speak  now  of  it  as  his  mouthpiece.  I  speak 
of  the  apostles  in  chief,  and  of  that  special  exercise  of 
faith  which  in  them  is  called  inspiration.  And  I  go  to 
ask  what  is  the  value  of  the  apostolic  inspiration,  in 
order  that  we  may  assess  the  value  of  the  apostles'  view 
of  the  person  and  work  of  Christ.  Was  their  view  of 
him  a  passing  impression,  a  personal  opinion,  perhaps  an 
early  extravagance  that  we  must  leave  behind  ?  The 
religious-historical  school  have  virtually  recognised  that 
views  of  Incarnation,  Atonement,  Redemption  and 
Sacrament  are  not  to  be  explained  away  out  of  the  New 
Testament  however  they  may  be  explained  into  it.  It  is 
an  immense  admission  which  I  shall  often  use ;  for  it 
concedes  that  the  views  developed  by  the  later  Church 
on  such  subjects  are  really  rooted  in  the  apostolic  creed, 
whether  that  creed  was  rooted  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  or 
not.  If  the  apostles  were  right  about  Christ,  the  Gospel 
of  the  whole  Catholic  and  Evangelical  Church  is  right. 
It  is  of  prime  moment,  therefore,  that  we  should  know  if 
the  inspiration  of  the  apostles  was  anything  which  gives 
to  their  teaching  on  these  heads  more  than  a  personal, 
temporary,  or  deflected  worth. 

§         §         § 
Must  everything  in  the  New  Testament  be  true  ?      Is 

everything  we  find  in  Jesus  revelation  ?  Was  his 
geocentric  view  of  the  world,  was  his  view  of  the  author- 
ship of  a  psalm,  was  his  every  precept— were  these 
permanent  revelation  ?  Again  was  everything  equally 
revelation  that  was  believed  about  Jesus  by  an  apostle  ? 
Or  was  there  not  rather  a  proportion  and  perspective  of 


v.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  139 

faith  ?  Do  such  things  not  stand  at  varying  distances 
from  the  vital  centre,  and  are  they  not  vital  accordingly  ? 
Again,  were  there  any  extraneous  ideas  at  work 
from  other  religions  on  Judaism,  on  the  Church,  on  the 
Apostles,  shaping  the  form  of  some  of  their  beliefs  ?  If 
so,  have  we  not  to  go  on  to  ask,  what  in  the  New 
Testament  is  of  faith,  and  what  comes  either  from  the 
mental  world  of  the  time  or  from  the  idiosyncracy  or 
the  education  of  the  writer — like  his  mode  of  argument  ? 
What  is  mere  impression,  and  what  is  speculative 
explanation,  and  what  is  in  the  nature  of  miraculous 
supernatural  insight  by  special  action  of  the  Spirit  ? 
These  distinctions  and  questions  are  inevitable. 

§         §         § 
The  Church  made  a  great  step  forward  when  it  was 
led    to    think   less   of  the    inspiration    of    a    book   and 
more     of    the    inspiration    of  the   men    that    wrote    it 
and    of  the    nation  that  bred    them.      We  learned  last 
century  that  inspiration  was  something  too  warm  and 
vital  to  belong  to  a  book ;   it  could  only  be  the  state  of 
a  living  soul.     It  was  personal  inspiration  and  not  book 
inspiration.      That  is  valuable,  but  it  does  not  end  the 
matter.    We  must  take  account,  as  of  the  Old  Testament 
nation,  so  of  the  corporate  consciousness  of  the  Church 
as  a  site  of  inspiration.     And  not  only  so  but  about  the 
man  we  must  ask  questions.     If  it  was  the  man  that  was 
inspired,  and  not  the  book,  was  everything  the  man  said 
or  did  inspired  ?     Or  did  the  inspiration  only  come  when 
he  had  to  speak  in  public,  or  take  the  pen  in  hand  ?     It 
is  no  necessary  guarantee  of  truth  to  say  it  came  from  an 
inspired  man.     Was  he  inspired  when  he  saw  it  ?     Was 
he  equally  inspired  when  he  said  it,  so  that   we  may  be 
sure  that  what  he  said  is  exactly  what  he  saw  ?      Which 


140  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

acts  of  apostles  were  inspired  ?  Was  it  inspiration  (it 
has  been  asked)  when  Peter  decided  to  take  his  wife  with 
him  on  a  missionary  journey,  or  when  Paul  discouraged 
marriage  ?  Were  such  things  in  inspired  men  also 
inspired  ?  Or  had  these  men  but  the  potentiality  of 
inspiration  for  use  on  due  occasions ;  and  did  it  need 
some  particular  historic  situation,  especially  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  Church,  or  some  special  divine 
intervention,  to  produce  the  inspired  state  and  insight  ? 

§         §         § 
Of  course,  to  begin,  they  had  at  least  such  a  personal 

relation  to  history  as  is  implied  in  saving  faith  in  a 
historic  Saviour.  Inspiration  had  faith  for  a  base.  And 
it  was  faith  positive,  faith  at  a  certain  practical  juncture. 
Accordingly  the  New  Testament  books  were  mostly 
occasional,  applying  fundamental  Christianity  to  par- 
ticular situations  in  the  believing  Church.  But  how 
much  is  to  be  allowed  for  the  situation  ?  And  where  is 
the  permanent  element  independent  of  situation,  and  not 
only  good  for  all  time  but  creative  ?  Surely  if  we  ask  the 
writers,  the  apostles  in  particular,  their  answer  is  that 
there  is  such  an  element,  and  that  it  centres  about  the 
person,  place,  and  work  of  Christ,  involving  a  real 
incarnation  and  atonement.  We  escape  thereby  from 
Rationalism,  orthodox  or  heterodox  ;  there  is  a  historic 
authority  claimed.  But  we  cannot  remain  in  mere 
Biblicism.  We  cannot  believe  a  certain  thing  just  because 
it  is  in  the  Bible.  And  our  city  of  refuge  is  Evangelism. 
What  we  really  believe  is  the  Gospel  which,  with  the  new 
soul,  called  the  Bible  also  into  being,  and  for  whose  sake 
it  exists.  It  is  not  the  Church.  For  the  books  of 
the  Bible  were  given  to  the  Church,  more  than  by  it,  and 
they  descended  on  it  rather  than  rose  from  it.    The  canon 


V  ]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  141 

of  the  Bible  rose  from  the  Church,  but  not  its  contents. 
Bible  and  Church  were  collateral  products  of  the  Gospel. 
But  we  go  on.  Having  fixed  in  the  New  Testament 
on  what  was  held  to  be  of  faith  and  central  to  faith,  we 
must  ask,  was  it  true  ?  How  far  is  that  theological  faith 
a  true  interpretation  of  the  historical  Jesus  Christ  ? 
Does  it  assign  to  Jesus  Christ  what  he  himself  claimed, 
or  wished  claimed,  when  we  read  him  as  a  whole  ?  Does 
it  express  what  he  compels  from  us  by  an  examination  of 
his  self-consciousness,  or,  still  more,  by  an  experience  of 
his  work  ? 

§         §         § 

Now  this  last,  his  work,  contains  the  greatest  claim  of 
all  so  far  as  the  New  Testament  is  concerned.  It  is 
what  the  apostles  operate  with  almost  entirely.  For 
them  Christians  are  not  people  who  have  a  Christian 
character,  whatever  their  beliefs,  nor  those  who  cherish 
ethical  ideas  about  dying  to  self  and  living  in  a  larger 
whole.  But  Christians  are  those  who  partake  by 
experience  in  Christ's  death,  resurrection,  and  eternal 
life.  The  apostles  do  not  take  our  modern  line  and 
interpret  the  self-consciousness  of  Jesus.  If  they  had, 
we  should  have  more  data  in  our  hands  for  doing  it. 
The  apostolic  method  was  to  stake  all  upon  Christ's 
person  and  the  cross  (with  its  obverse  of  the  Resurrec- 
tion), upon  the  cross  and  Christ's  work  there,  appropri- 
ated by  the  Church's  faith  and  experience  of  the  New 
Creation. 

The  question  then,  is,  Is  the  apostolic  method  right 
in  this  respect  ?  Is  it  a  true  interpretation  of  Jesus  to  do 
as  it  did,  and  fix  on  the  cross  (with  the  resurrection)  as 
the  key  to  him  and  his  meaning  ?  Is  this  the  authentic 
word  in  the  Bible  ?       It   is   now  generally  felt  how  true 


142  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

was  the  selective  insight  of  Jesus  in  respect  to  the  Old 
Testament,  when  for  his  teaching  he  seized  on  the 
prophetic  element  in  it  rather  than  the  legal  as  the  fertile 
core  of  its  revelation  and  the  red  line  of  God's  coming. 
Can  we  be  as  sure  that  the  apostles  were  equally  right 
when,  in  the  prophets,  they  concentrated  on  Is.  53, 
and  seized  on  Christ's  atoning  death  and  resurrection 
among  all  the  features  of  his  activity,  as  the  site  of 
the  consummatory  and  illuminative  Word  about  himself  ? 
Were  they  wrong  when  they  found  the  two  lines,  the 
prophetic  and  the  priestly,  meeting  there  ? 

§         §         § 

In  approaching  the  answer  to  such  questions,  and 
assessing  the  value  of  New  Testament  inspiration  as  real 
insight  into  the  person  and  work  of  Christ,  we  might 
clear  the  ground  with  a  few  more  interrogatories. 

Could  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  or  of  the 
Incarnation,  be  established  for  a  Church,  for  the  race, 
on  the  synoptics  alone,  historically  and  critically 
searched  ?  I  do  not  think  they  could.  But  then  neither 
could  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  or  the  Church,  to 
say  nothing  of  others.  Indeed  it  is  only  constructively 
that  we  can  find  there  the  modern  idea  of  a  development 
of  Christ's  public  character  and  purpose.  I  am  sure  that 
the  Church  at  least,  which  was  founded  on  the  apostles' 
atoning  interpretation  of  the  cross,  could  not  live  upon 
the  Synoptics  alone.     It  could  not  find  itself  in  them. 

But  perhaps  these  doctrines  then  are  compatible  with 
the  Synoptics  and  latent  there,  if  they  are  not  palpable. 
Are  they  ?  Yes,  some  would  say ;  no,  would  be  said  by 
others.  I  believe  they  are.  And  that  is  the  real 
question.  It  is  not  whether  the  Synoptics  would  yield 
the  doctrines,  but  whether  the  doctrines,  and  the  doctrines 


v.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  143 

alone,  explain  them.  And  I  think  critical  opinion  is 
growing  that  the  doctrines  do  explain  them ;  because 
the  Evangelists  wrote  in  the  atmosphere  and  interest 
of  such  doctrines,  though  not  to  prove  them.  They  knew 
nothing  of  our  undogmatic  Christianity,  however  we 
may  revise  and  edit  down  what  they  wrote.  They  may 
have,  of  course,  been  taking  a  liberty  with  the  historic 
Jesus  in  doing  so.  They  may  have  been  importing 
the  doctrines  and  imposing  them  on  Jesus.  That  is 
not  here  the  question.  But  critical  opinion  is  on  the 
point  of  outgrowing  the  idea  that  the  Synoptics  represent 
undogmatic  Christianity.  So  much  the  religious 
historical  school  has  done  for  us. 

And  if  it  be  asked  farther  whether  the  apostles, 
whether  Paul,  saw  these  doctrines  in  the  historic  Jesus, 
and  were  forced  on  them  by  his  revolutionary  action  on 
themselves,  of  course  we  must  recognise  that  they  did 
so  see  them.  We  are  long  past  any  twisting  of  their 
meaning  which  would  go  to  show  that  they  did  not, 
that  they  meant  less  than  the  Reformers  thought,  and 
were  really  Broad  Church  theologians  or  ideologues 
born  out  of  due  time.  We  may  treat  their  views  as  we 
think  proper  once  we  settle  what  they  were,  but  the 
scientific,  the  purely  historic  version  of  their  views  is  as 
I  say.  For  them  the  theological  interest  is  fundamental. 
On  such  a  point  Pfleiderer's  Paulinism  is  very  valuable. 
They  did  believe  they  found  such  doctrines,  the  doctrines 
of  grace,  at  the  centre  of  the  historic  Christ,  whether 
you  think  them  fantastics  or  not  for  doing  so.  That  is 
another  question.  And  it  is  one  that  wc  must  go  on 
to  discuss. 

§         §         § 
The  apostles  believed  Jesus  to  be  the  eternal,  atoning 


144  ^^'^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

and  redeeming  Son  of  God  ;  what  is  the  value  of  their 
belief?  They  did  not  reason  it  out  on  a  speculative 
basis,  however  they  may  have  sometimes  used  specu- 
lative ideas  as  a  calculus  in  the  attempt  to  convey  it. 
It  was  a  matter  of  their  regenerate  experience  of  Christ's 
historic  work,  and  of  their  insight  into  its  postulates  in 
terms  of  current  ideas.  What  is  the  worth  of  the 
apostolic  insight  ?  Was  Christ  valuable  for  the  sake  of 
certain  spiritual  ideas,  or  were  the  ideas  valuable  as 
expositions  of  Christ  ?  Was  the  apostolic  insight  on 
the  same  footing  as  ours  ?  Take  the  insight  of  reason, 
what  Hegel  calls  the  intuition  of  thought.  Has  modern 
reason  as  good  a  right  over  our  faith  as  the  interpretation 
of  Christ  which  the  apostles  offered  for  revelation  ? 
Take  faith.  Has  modern  faith  an  equal  validity  with 
theirs,  or  one  even  greater  by  all  the  long  experience 
through  which  the  Church  has  since  passed  ?  Can 
modern  Christianity,  therefore,  correct  the  apostles  upon 
fundamental  truths  like  the  deity  or  atonement  of  Christ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  will  depend  on  the  place 
we  assign  to  the  apostles  in  the  economy  of  revelation ; 
on  their  place  as  uniquely  inspired — inspired  as  much 
above  the  ordinary  level  of  Christian  faith  as  that  is 
supernatural  to  the  reason  or  vision  of  the  world.  Let 
us  examine  this. 

§         §         § 

If  we  start  with  Christ  as  giving  the  revelation  of 
God  in  nuce,  and  say  that  Christendom  and  Christianity 
form  the  evolution  of  that  infinite  germ,  we  take  a  line 
which  is  very  welcome  to  many  among  us  to-day.  But 
they  do  not  measure,  perhaps,  all  it  carries.  It  carries 
this,  that,  as  in  the  evolutionary  progress  we  come  to 
know  better,  the  Apostles'  Creed  is  worth  more  than  the 


v.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  145 

Epistles,  the  Athanasian  Creed  worth  more  than  the 
Nicene,  the  Augsburg  Confession  greater  than  them  all, 
and  the  modern  Christian  consciousness  the  court  of 
final  appeal  beyond  that.  Or  the  Vatican  decrees, 
perhaps,  may  be  the  summit — unless  you  say  offhand 
that  the  Roman  Church  is  not  a  Church  at  all,  but 
totally  outside  the  evolutionary  area. 

This  is,  however,  a  result  which,  welcome  as  it  may 
be  to  the  masterless  subjectivity  of  the  time,  gives  no 
finality,  but  makes  each  age  its  own  spiritual  authority. 
It  gives  but  Protestant  Liberalism  or  Roman  Modernism. 
And  it  is  chiefly  due  to  the  error  of  thinking  that  a 
simple  conception  of  evolution,  evolution  deploying, 
under  spiritual  law,  in  one  direction,  with  a  steady  swell, 
will  suit  history,  and  especially  religious  history,  as  well 
as  it  does  biology.  If  that  were  true,  however,  I  am 
afraid  we  should  have  to  reduce  Christ  to  a  position  no 
higher  essentially  than  one  of  his  own  apostles.  He 
would  be  Master  and  they  disciples,  of  course,  but  they 
would  be  ejusdem  generis,  like  Socrates  and  his  circle ; 
and  he  could  no  longer  be  viewed  as  the  revelationary 
fact  but  as  its  discoverer  only — like  Darwin.  Nay  he 
could  discover  but  a  stage  of  it.  For  the  grand  revela- 
tion, on  such  a  theory,  could  only  be  at  the  end,  and 
not  at  the  beginning  of  the  series,  if  it  ever  were 
attainable  at  all. 

But  if  we  are  dealing  with  those  who  do  believe  in  a 
past  fact  really  revelationary,  and  no  mere  germ,  the 
question  is,  what  was  that  fact  ?  What  was  the  revelation  ? 
Where  did  it  begin  ?  And  above  all  where  did  it  end  ? 
For  the  kinrl  of  revelation  here  concerned  is  one  that 
does  not  go  on  unrolling  indefinitely,  but  it  has  an  end. 
It  has  a  finality,  even  \i  the  finality  were  not  allowed. 


146  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

§         §         § 
May  I  invite  you  a  little  way  into  the  philosophy  of 
the  case.     Consider  the  long  evolutionary  series.     The 
whole  process  of  creation  did  not  develop  at  large,  but 
developed    in  man    to  an  end,  an    interpreting  end,  an 
end   of    infinite    value.      Man    is    a    close   for    all   the 
evolution  that  preceded  him  in  nature.      That  is  true 
even  when  we  recognise  the  evolution  within  man  him- 
self.    The   evolution   in   man    is  a   sublimation   of  the 
evolution  to  man.     Nature  evolves  to  a  close,  which  is 
none  the  less  a  real  close  because  it  has  within  itself  an 
evolving  history.     Such  closes  are  what  every  soul  is — 
ends    in   themselves   (though  with   a  career),   and    with 
a   value  more  absolute   than    any    mere    stepping-stone 
to  a  sequel.     When  evolution    reaches   personality  and 
history,    it   becomes    more    than     simple    and    onward 
merely.     Its   nature   and   method   change.     It  becomes 
another    thing    when    it  has   to   do  with   freedom  and 
purpose — with  souls.       In  the  soul  we  have  a  spiritual 
world  that  does   not    simply  arise    and  crown    the  past 
but  invades    it    and  stands  over    it   as  the  earnest  and 
surety  of  its    future.      The  end  emerges  in  the  means. 
Evolution  becomes    quite    another  thing    when    it  rises 
to   be    teleological    in     this   way.     It   then    becomes   a 
"  kingdom  of  ends."        Each  soul    is   an  end  in  itself, 
and    not  a  mere  cell,  or  a  mere  link.     Each   great  soul 
stands    for    a    permanent     value.     And    so   with    each 
historic   crisis.       History  moves   to  ends ;    and   even    if 
these  again  move   to   higher  ends,    they   are   not   mere 
points  of  transition.     We  have  a  rising  series  of  peaks 
not   of  links — peaks  of  single  and  standing  value  against 
the  infinite  sky.    We  progress  by  a  progression  of  crises, 
which  close,  or  harvest,  each  a  movement  or  age,  and 


▼.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  147 

garner  its  permanent  value  not  only  to  be  carried  over  to 
the  next  age  but  also  registered  and  credited  in  Eternity. 
For  we  grow  laterally,  vertically,  spherically,  outward 
into  Eternity  as  surely  as  onward  into  the  future.  And 
these  peaks  make  an  ascending  range.  These  real 
closes  again  postulate  a  grand  end  of  all  ends  and 
crisis  of  all  crises,  a  harvest  of  the  world  and  all 
its  ages,  and  even  of  eternity ;  and  one,  too,  not 
awaiting  history  far  off,  but  invading  it,  pervading  it, 
and  mastering  it  always.  For  the  spiritual  world,  as 
Eucken  reiterates  upon  us  in  all  his  system,  not  only 
accompanies  this  world  but  faces  it,  addresses  it,  inter- 
feres with  it,  dictates  to  it,  judges  it  and  cannot 
rest  till  it  subdue  it.  There  is  a  fundamental  inroad  of 
a  final  and  autonomous  power  into  the  plexus  of  causal 
evolution — a  repeated  and  incessant  miracle.  And  the 
Christian  plea  is  that  the  nature  and  reality  of  this 
supreme  end  for  the  whole  soul  of  man  is  not  only 
anticipated  or  asserted  but  it  is  secured  in  advance  by 
revelation  ;  which  is  not  the  process,  but  something  in 
the  process  yet  not  of  it,  and  something  that  determines 
it.  And  it  is  this  final  thing  that  we  have  in  Jesus 
Christ  and  his  crucial  redemption.  We  have  in  him  a 
close  which  is  incompatible  with  a  simple  evolution,  or 
mere  crescendo,  of  being.  We  have,  midway,  a  creator,  a 
finality,  an  authority  which  no  evolution  can  give.  That 
is  what  we  mean  by  starting  from  the  revelation  in 
Christ.'' 

§         §         § 
The  question  then  becomes  this ;  what  is  the  place  of 
apostolic  inspiration    in    this  finality  which  we  have  in 

*I  must  deal  elsewhere  more  fully  with  the  question  whether  in  Christ 
we  have  a  revelation  or  the  revelation,  an  interim  report  of  God  or  a  final. 


148  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

Christ  ?  If  Christ  was  final  what  finality  or  authority 
over  us  is  left  for  his  Apostles  and  their  inspiration  ? 
Have  we  in  them  but  the  first  crude  guesses  in  the 
evolution  of  thought  about  him,  guesses  raw  in  the  ore 
of  contemporary  notions,  which  recent  thought  has 
smelted  down  to  a  small  residuum  ?  Was  Christ  the 
whole  of  the  Christian  revelation,  body  and  soul  of  it,  its 
matter  and  form  ?  Did  Israel,  did  revelation  rise  slowly 
to  its  full  and  final  height  in  Jesus  only  to  drop  suddenly 
and  sharply  to  the  amateur  and  tentative  level  of  Paul  ? 
Was  Christ  removed  from  the  groping  thought  of  Peter, 
Paul,  and  John  by  a  greater  gulf  than  that  which  parted 
him  from  the  Judaism  so  fatal  to  him  ?  Was  the 
thought  of  his  devotees  about  him  more  of  a  perversion 
of  him  than  the  thought  of  the  foes  he  hated  so  well  ? 
Wernle  says  it  was  so.  And  it  is  an  idea  which  acts  on 
many  who  never  formulate  it,  never  express  it,  and  do 
not  realise  how  deeply  it  affects  and  depresses  them. 
The  whole  stress  is  laid  upon  the  historic  act  or  person 
of  Christ.  The  whole  revelation  is  held  to  be  exhausted 
there.  That  is  the  history  as  fact ;  the  writing  of  the 
history  is  a  quite  secondary  matter,  and  belongs  to  a 
much  inferior  stage.  It  is  a  product  diluted  by 
reflection  and  distorted  by  artificiality — at  most  a  bad 
photograph  of  the  revelation,  and  not  a  part  of  it ; 
or  it  is  light  turned  on  Christ  instead  of  issuing  from 
him.  In  the  actual  history  (it  is  said)  God  was  at  work 
revealing  ;  but  in  the  record,  or  commentary,  it  was  man 
construing.  In  the  transfer  to  writing  much  of  the 
reality  has  vanished  ;  and  the  living  plant  is  even  dried 
between  the  leaves  of  the  book.  So  it  is  said.  And  thus 
our  very  exaltation  of  the  personal  revelation  in  Christ 
has  led  to  a  fatal  depreciation  and  neglect  of  the  Bible,  as 


v.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  149 

being  a  mere  record,  which  we  may  use  for  our  satisfac- 
tion but  need  not  for  our  life. 

§         §         § 
Now  on  that  head  there  is  this  to  say.    Christ  certainly 

was  the  final  and  complete  revelation  of  God,  in  every 

material  sense.     In  him  the  great  transaction  was  done, 

the  great  Word  said.     In  him  we  have  history's  final 

cause  and  final  crown.     In  him  we  have  the  great  close. 

All  evolution  up  to  him  now  goes  on  in  him.     In  Christ 

creation  "  arrived,"  attained  for  good.     In  every  material 

sense  that  is  so.     But  in  a  formal  sense  it  is  not  so. 

The  material  revelation  and  consummation  in  Christ  is 

not    complete   without   a   formal    consummation    in    its 

interpretation.     The   finished    work    of    Christ   was   not 

finished  till  it  was  got   home.     A  lesson  is  not  taught, 

say  our  educationalists,  till  it  is  learned.     He  made  the 

victory  real,  but  he  had  yet  to  make  it  actual.     He  had 

not  to  gain  another  victory,  but  he  had  to  follow  up  the 

victory  he  had  won,  and  enter  on  the  kingdom  it  secured. 

The  great  close  in  Christ  had  itself  to  be  closed,  or  at 

least  clinched,  in  a  close  of  its  own. 

§  §  § 
I  have  spoken  of  one  error  that  misleads  us — the 
treatment  of  historic  and  moral  development  as  if  it  were 
a  case  of  simple  and  continuous  evolution  ;  marred, 
indeed,  by  occasional  fits  of  degeneration  and  reversion, 
but  devoid  of  those  great  consummations  or  "  harvests  '* 
which  truly  end  one  age  and  begin  another,  but  are 
also  permanent  acts  and  conquests  of  the  Absolute 
and  Eternal.  There  is,  however,  another  analogy 
from  nature  which  is  as  misleading  as  it  mostly  is 
to  carry  natural  law  into  the  moral  world.  It  is 
the  analogy  of  the  germ.     The  germ  in  nature  unfolds 

M 


150         The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

by  absorbing  the    forces   of    its   environment    and   ex- 
ploiting them  for  its  own  individual  growth.     It  is  more 
concerned  to    assert    and     develop    its    own    individu- 
ality, or  that  of  its  species,  than  to  create  a  new  order 
and  establish  a  new  world.     But  a  germ,  a  source,  in  a 
revelation  of   grace,    is   different.     Its  object    is    not   to 
absorb  the  world  but  to  act  on  it.     It  has  to  unfold  not 
within  itself  so  much  as  within  an  intelligence  of  itself. 
Its  purpose  is  not  to  be  but  to  be  understood,    to    be 
answered  ;  it  is  not  to  live  on  its  environment   but   to 
bless  it.     A  germ  of  life   is   one   thing,  and  a  germ    of 
revelation  or  redemption  is  another.      In  the  one  case  we 
have   to    do   with   a  created  fact,  in  the  other  with  a 
creative.     In  the  one  case  we  have  the  fact  insulated  and 
self-sufficient,  in  the  other  the  fact  is  inert  apart  from  its 
being  understood  and    interpreted.     You  have  not  the 
whole  fact  without  its  interpretation.    If  human  evolution 
closed  in   Christ  it  did   not  close  in  a  mere  Superman, 
whose  genius  it  was  to  thrive  on  a  merely  tributary  race. 
A  gracious  close  like  Christ  is  one  that  takes  effect  in 
human  response  and  communion,  and  not  in  mere  contri- 
bution.    His  value  is  not  in  himself  all  unknown,  but  in 
himself  interpreted  and  assimilated  by  the  race  in  which 
he  rises.      The  fact  Christ,  however  complete  materially, 
is  not  complete  formally,  or  in  effect,  till  he  is  understood 
and    answered,  till  he    is   explained  and    realised    in    a 
Church.       That  he  is  complete  materially  is  shown  by 
the  fact  that  his  explanation  proceeds  from  himself.      He 
is  his  own  interpreter.     It  is  very  properl}'  asked   con- 
cerning  the    synoptic    Christ,   Why  did  he  not  explain 
himself  ?     And  the  answer  is  that  he  did,  as  soon  as  the 
whole  work  was  done,  and  the  whole  fact  accomplished 
which  had  to  be  explained.    He  interpreted  himself  in  his 


V.I  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  151 

Apostles,  in  the  New  Testament.  If  Paul's  view  of 
Christ  was  but  a  guess,  and  can  now  be  seen  to  be  a 
wrong  one,  the  revelation  was  left  by  Christ  incomplete, 
and  therewith  the  redemption.  The  great  close,  there- 
fore, ends  in  bearing  witness  of  itself,  and  coming  to 
its  own  in  man's  soul.  And  this  happened  in  the 
Apostles.  To  close  this  great  close  is  the  work  of  the 
New  Testament,  as  something  formally,  uniquely,  integral 
to  the  revelation  in  Christ. 

§         §         § 
When    we    say    the    revelation    is    Christ   we    must 
take  the  whole  Christ,  the  whole  New  Testament  Christ, 
the   Christ  as  his  Spirit  interpreted  him,  and  not  only 
the  Christ  as  an  annalist,  a  reporter,  might  record  him. 
To   say   vaguely   that  the  revelation  is  Christ,  or  that 
Christ    is    the    centre,    is    the    source   of  most    of  our 
confusion.     The  manifestation  had  to  be  closed  by  the 
interpretation  or  inspiration  to  complete  the  revelation. 
The  material  revelation  had  to  take  effect  in  a  formal  in- 
spiration before  it  could  start  on   the  career  of  its  own 
evolution.     It  took  this  formal  effect  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, which  is  not  the  mere  product  of  the  revelation  but 
part  of  it,  the  formal  element  of  it,  as  Christ  was  the 
material.     If    the    only    legacy    of  Christ    was  the    im- 
pression he  left  on  his  followers,    of  course    this  could 
not    be    so.     But    impression   was  not  all.     Christianity 
is    not    an    impressionist    creed.        The    faith    of    the 
Church,    being    an     act     of    life's    self-committal    and 
worship,    is     more    than     the    posthumous    impression 
left    by   Jesus.       Had    it    not    been    more,  like    all  im- 
pressions  it   would    have    worn    off.       As     an     act     it 
answered  an  act — an  eternal  act,  which  gives  it  its  own 
depth   and    permanency.      It    was    a    new   life,    a    new 


152  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

creation.  And  still  greater  than  the  Church's  faith  is  the 
apostles'  inspiration,  a  life  even  within  the  new  life.  It 
is  not  only  a  response,  but  that  part  of  Christ's  great  and 
final  act  which  is  continued  by  him  from  the  unseen  ; 
it  is  not  a  mere  echo  of  it  in  his  survivors.  The  New 
Testament  is  not  the  first  stage  of  the  evolution  hut  the 
last  phase  of  the  revelationary  fact  and  deed.  The  revela- 
tion had  to  be  interpreted  for  all  time  in  order  to  act 
on  time — ^just  as,  on  a  lower  plane,  the  Church  of  the 
early  centuries  is  put  into  the  Athanasian  Creed  for  all 
time,  and  the  Reformation  into  the  Augsburg  Con- 
fession. But  the  plane  is  much  lower.  For  into  these 
documents  it  was  the  Church  that  put  itself,  whereas 
into  the  New  Testament  it  was  Christ  that  put  him- 
self, in  a  way  parallel  to  his  self-projection  in  the 
Church.  The  creeds  are  not  parallel  to  the  Church, 
but  the  Bible  is.  They  are  products  of  the  Church. 
The  Bible  is  not.  It  is  a  parallel  product  of  the 
Spirit  who  produced  the  Church.  The  Church  was 
made  by  faith,  the  Bible  by  inspiration.  They  are  two 
products  of  one  Spirit ;  the  one  is  not  a  product  of  the 
other.  The  Bible  was  not  produced  by  the  Church  ;  and 
yet  the  Church  was  there  before  the  Bible.  Both  were 
there  collaterally  from  the  Spirit. 

§  §  § 
I  may  perhaps  use  another  illustration,  suggested  by 
Griitzmacher,  which  I  will  somewhat  enlarge  in  the 
application.  In  a  parliamentary  discussion,  if  the 
subject  be  very  large,  the  debate  may  go  on  indefinitely, 
as  new  aspects  of  the  question  are  unfolded  and  new 
lights  cast  upon  it.  As  the  discussion  is  carried  into  the 
press  so  much  the  more  do  new  points  arise,  and  again 
fresh    points    out    of    these.     If    the    parliament   were 


v.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  153 

enlarged  to  the  dimensions  of  the  press  the  evolution  and 
the  length  of  the  analytic  process  might  be  interminable. 
And  it  would  become  quite  interminable  if  the  whole  of 
the  population  were  included  in  the  debate — to  say 
nothing  of  the  population  of  the  world,  extended  to  all  the 
population  that  had  ever  existed  on  the  earth.  Now 
such  a  process  would  correspond  to  the  simple  expansive 
evolution  of  the  natural  world  in  a.  process.  But  in  practi- 
cal affairs  a  point  comes  when  the  debate  must  be  closed. 
It  really  does  not  exist  for  its  own  expansion,  but  for 
the  sake  of  its  close,  in  due  time,  in  an  act;  which  act 
is  its  end,  and  has  a  value  and  authority  relatively  final. 
It  is  final  so  far  as  that  debate  is  concerned,  and  it  is 
permanent  amid  all  subsequent  debates.  It  registers 
a  real  achievement  and  a  point  won.  Even  if  it 
becomes  the  point  of  departure  for  future  reform  it  is 
more  than  that.  It  has  a  real  value  for  its  present. 
It  has  added  to  the  permanent.  So  the  evolutionary 
process  culminates  from  time  to  time  in  results  which 
are  not  mere  products  of  the  process  but  are  im- 
posed on  it  by  a  will ;  and  they  have  more  value 
than  mere  points  of  transition  or  links  of  past  and  future. 
And  if  the  process  were  on  a  world-scale  all  these  ends, 
with  their  relative  finality,  with  their  permanent  contri- 
bution and  eternal  value,  would  be  gathered  up  in  an  end 
absolutely  final,  the  end  of  all  ends,  their  consummation, 
in  which  they  found  themselves  when  the  mere  process 
of  their  production  had  faded  away  with  the  ink  of  the 
cosmic  Hansard.  The  Christian  case  is  that  this  cosmic 
end  has  been  anticipated  with  condensed  finality  at  one 
point  of  history,  for  the  sake  of  all  the  rest,  in  the 
absolute  end,  act,  and  personality  of  Jesus  Christ. 

But  to  go  a  step  further.     If  parliament  simply  passed 


154  ^'*^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect 

its  act  and  proceeded  to  a  new  subject  what  would  the 
effect   be  ?     It   would   be   nothing.     The    House    would 
have  the  satisfaction  of  having  done  something,  gathered 
up  its  discussion,  and  expressed   itself,  and,  so  far,  the 
country  behind  it,  in  an  act  of  public  will.     And  it  would 
then  go  to  the  moors,   leaving  behind   it  an  academic 
resolution.     But  for  public  life  and  the  public  future  that 
would  be  perfectly  futile.     The  act  of  the  House's  will 
must  by  the  same  will  go  upon  the  House's  records.     It 
must  be  printed  and   circulated  in  due  form.     It  must 
be  accessible  to  the  nation  when  the  House  has  risen, 
and   when   that   parliament    has    dissolved.      It   is   not 
enough  that  an  account  of  it  should  appear  in  the  papers 
according  to  the  skill  of  the  stenographer,  or  the  view 
of   some  publicist   who    studied  the  debates.     It  must 
be  printed  by  order  of  the  House.     And  it  must  carry 
the  royal  seal  of  finality  upon  it.     That  is  to  say,  the 
form  of  the  act  is  there  by  the  same  will  of  the  Govern- 
ment   as    carried    the  principle  of  the  act.     The  act  as 
printed  and  published  is  an  integral  though  formal  part 
of  the  material    act    of    will    which    passed    it.      Now, 
with  all  recognition  of  the  difference  between  the  strict 
verbiage  of  an  act  and  the  fluidity  of  much  in  scripture 
both   as   to    word    and  fact,    that  illustration  represents 
the  relation  of  the    New    Testament  to  God's  fact  and 
act    of   Christ.     The    form    is   part   of  the   whole   act. 
And  the   illustration   would    be    still    more    detailed    if 
we  included  in  the  Act  of  Parliament  a  provision  that 
it  go  to   the  public  accompanied    by  certain   schedules 
of  explanation  drawn  up  by  order  of  the  Crown.     The 
point    is    that    not    only    does    the  evolutionary    series 
exist     and     work    to    a    positive    end,    but    that    that 
material  end    has    within  itself  a    formal  close,  expres- 


v.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  155 

sion,  and  interpretation  ;  which  is  an  integral  part  of 
it,  essential  to  its  effect,  and  not  simply  a  first  amateur 
and  tentative  stage  in  its  interpretation  by  the  casual 
press  and  public.  The  formal  expression  shares,  in  its 
way,  in  the  authority  of  the  material  act,  and  has  behind 
it  the  royal  power.  This  is  the  authority  in  the  Bible. 
It  is  a  factor  in  the  finality  of  Christ.  It  is  a  schedule  to 
the  act,  and  not  a  mere  leader  on  it.  We  can  no  more 
believe  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible,  but  we  must  believe 
in  its  finality.  That  is  the  region  of  its  inspiration.  It  is 
a  region  of  religion  and  faith.  For  in  theology  there  is  no 
finality.  What  science  requires  is  evolution,  and  theology 
is  science.  But  the  one  need  of  religion  to-day  is 
finality.  And  for  Christianity  that  can  only  be  had  by 
an  Incarnate  Christ  as  preached  in  an  inspired  Bible. 

The  point,  then,  of  this  lecture  is  this  :  When  the 
Apostles  spoke  as  they  did  upon  such  central  matters  as 
the  eternal  sonship  and  due  worship  of  Jesus  Christ  they 
did  not  speak  from  themselves ;  they  recorded  no  mere 
impression,  and  ventured  no  guess  to  explain  the 
impression  left  by  Christ ;  but  they  spoke  as  men  in 
whose  experience  there  spoke  still  more  the  Christ  who 
lived  in  them.  And,  though  on  matters  lying  further 
from  the  centre,  on  matters  of  anthropology  rather  than 
theology  (like  the  connection  between  sin  and  physical 
death),  they  were  less  authoritative,  yet  when  they  spoke 
of  Christ's  person  or  his  work,  they  were  the  organs  of 
Christ  himself,  and  their  truth  has  a  value  for  all  sub- 
sequent times  which  partakes  of  the  authority  of  that 
revelation  whom  they  interpreted. 


LECTURE    VI 

THE    TESTIMONY    OF    APOSTOLIC 
INSPIRATION— IN    PARTICULAR 


LECTURE    VI 


THE    TESTIMONY    OF   APOSTOLIC    INSPIRATION — 
IN    PARTICULAR 

In  positive  revelation  we  have  to  do  with  two  things. 
The  one  fact  has  two  constituents.  We  have,  first,  the 
history  or  the  manifestation,  and  we  have,  second,  the 
inspiration  or  the  interpretation  of  the  history.  We 
have,  first,  God  entering  the  world,  and  we  have, 
second,  this  entry  of  God  entering  man.  We  have  the 
fact,  and  we  have  the  word  of  the  fact.  The  fact  we  have 
in  Christ ;  but  the  word  of  it,  the  meaning  of  it,  we  have 
in  believers  and  apostles  moved  by  Christ.  And  especi- 
ally in  the  apostles,  whose  insight  becomes  itself  a  fact, 
in  turn,  working  upon  believers  from  faith  to  faith.  So 
that  we  have  three  things — first  the  incarnate  fact,  then, 
the  word  or  interpretation  of  it  by  apostles,  and,  thereby, 
the  fact  again,  but  the  fact  enshrined  in  the  soul  of  the 
believing  Church.  To  use  philosophical  terms,  we 
have  the  thesis,  planting  itself  out  in  an  antithesis,  and, 
then  reclaiming,  recovering  itself  in  a  synthesis.  We 
have  first,  the  fact  incarnate,  then  the  fact  interpreted, 
and  then  the  fact  enthroned.  But  we  must  have  the  word 
as  well  as  the  fact,  if  the  fact  is  to  do  anything  with  men. 
The  word  is  an  essential  part  of  the  fact,  or,  let  us  say,  an 

"59 


i6o  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

essential  function  of  it.  It  is  the  fact  reacting  on  itself. 
It  is  the  vast  eternal  action  of  Christ  reverberating  in  the 
consciousness  of  his  apostles.  It  went  out  as  power  and 
returns  as  light,  doubling  back  luminously  upon  itself, 
as  it  were,  to  search  its  old  track  by  this  inspiration. 
Only  in  such  a  sense  is  the  incarnation  prolonged  in  the 
Church.  The  total  revelation  needs  the  inspiration  as 
well  as  the  manifestation,  the  thought  no  less  than  the 
thing,  "The  fact  without  the  word  is  dumb;  and  the 
word  without  the  fact  is  empty." 

Now  it  is  only  with  the  interpretation  of  the  fact  that 
inspiration  has  to  do,  and  not  with  the  fact  itself;  for  we 
do  not  speak  of  Christ  the  fact  as  an  inspired  man.  Nor 
has  it  directly  to  do  with  the  establishment  of  the  fact  as 
a  fact.  Inspiration  has  not  to  do  with  information  but 
with  insight-  It  has  to  do  entirely  with  the  theology  of 
the  matter,  and  not  with  its  historicity.  What  a  pagan 
or  mantic  notion  of  inspiration  they  must  have  who  use  it 
to  discredit  theology,  who  in  the  name  of  truth  dis- 
credit interpretation  by  afflatus.  The  facts  in  the 
Bible  were  established  by  the  usual  means,  as  in 
Luke's  case  (Luke  i.  i).  But  the  meaning  of  the  fact 
— that  is  the  field  of  inspiration.  The  fact  of  the 
cross,  for  instance,  is  established  by  the  ordinary 
historic  evidence ;  but  it  was  no  ordinary  means  that 
enabled  Paul  to  see  its  interior — the  atonement,  the 
centrality,  and  the  finality  of  it  for  Christ's  work. 
The  idea  of  propitiation,  for  instance,  was  in  Juda- 
ism and  its  ritual.  That  is  something  of  which  we 
have  the  due  historic  evidence.  The  inspiration  of  the 
apostle  was  not  in  discovering  the  idea;  it  was  in  seeing 
its  real  truth  and  consummation  to  be  in  the  fact  and  act 
of  Christ.     The  idea  had  at  last  become  historically  and 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  i6l 

finally  effective  in  Christ.  The  fact  of  the  cross  was  seen 
to  mean  that  consummation.  Yet  the  insight  was  the 
result  of  that  fact's  own  peculiar  nature,  working  on 
Paul's  peculiar  nature,  through  the  Lord  the  Spirit.  So 
that  the  New  Testament  writings  are  really  a  part  of  that 
fact  ;  just  as  the  Old  Testament  is  an  essential  part  of 
Israel's  history,  and  not  merely  a  description,  nor  only  a 
product  of  it.  The  apostles  read  God's  will  in  the  fact 
of  Christ ;  but  it  was  from  a  height  of  faith  to  which 
that  fact  had  raised  them.  Christ  by  his  work  made 
them  saints,  and  by  the  inspiration  of  his  Spirit  he 
made  them  theologians.  The  inspiration  of  the 
Redeemer  gave  them  that  understanding.  They  saw 
the  deep  things  in  Christ  under  the  moral  coercion 
of  the  fact  and  its  nature,  under  its  creative  and 
illuminative  action  on  them.  It  reorganised  their  whole 
conceptual  world  by  giving  it  a  new  vital  centre,  and 
therefore  a  new  reading.  They  saw  a  new  world  because 
a  new  king  was  on  its  throne.  And  it  was  a  vital  and 
creative  centre.  There  was  new  vision,  not  simply  a 
new  point  of  view,  because  the  eyes  that  saw  it  were  the 
eyes  of  new  men. 

§  §  § 
But  why  isolate  the  apostles  and  give  them  a  unique 
authority  ?  The  apostles  were  not  the  only  contempo- 
raries of  Christ  nor  his  only  followers.  Yet  the  rest  did 
not  see  what  they  saw.  The  whole  public,  the  whole 
Church  even,  did  not  rise  to  Paul's  height  or  John's. 
How  shall  we  know  that  the  insight  and  judgment  of  the 
apostles  was  worth  more,  was  more  true  to  the  fact, 
than  that  of  other  contemporaries  of  Jesus  who  were  not 
so  impressed  ?  Why  should  they  be  right,  and  Judas, 
Caiaphas,  or  Pilate  wrong — as  well  as  many  better  men, 


i62  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

like  Hillel,  who  did  not  respond  as  the  disciples  did  to 
Christ  ?  How  do  we  know  that  the  apostle's  view  of  him 
is  the  divine  truth  of  him  ?  How  do  we  know  that  Paul's 
Christianity  is  truer  than  that  of  the  Judaistic  Christians 
who  opposed  him  as  earnestly  and  sincerely  as  the 
rationalists  do  now  ? 

Well,  in  the  first  place  they  were  all  contemporary  but 
they  were  not  all  intimate  with  Jesus.  All  had  acquain- 
tance but  all  had  not  knowledge.  All  had  met  Christ  but 
all  had  not  companied  with  him.  Nor  were  they  selected 
and  taught  by  him  in  view  of  the  future. 

But  even  of  those  who  companied  with  Jesus  all  did 
not  see  in  Him  or  His  cross  what  John,  Paul,  and  Peter 
declare  that  they  at  last  came  to  see.  And  Paul  and  the 
author  of  Hebrews  did  not  company  with  Jesus ;  yet 
they  go  deeper  than  any  of  those  that  did — for  John 
owed  himself  in  this  respect  to  Paul.  How  was  it  ? 
Were  the  men  who  saw  deepest  more  holy  personally 
than  the  rest  ?  Was  it  because  they  did  the  will  better 
that  they  knew  of  the  doctrine  ?  Will  that  overworked 
principle  explain  inspiration  ?  Why  should  we  prefer  the 
interpretation  of  Paul  to  that  of  the  early  chapters  of 
Acts  ?  Why  prefer  even  the  late  Peter  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  early  Peter  of  the  Acts  ? 

Let  us  see  what  they  believed  and  claimed  as  to 
themselves.  They  did  claim  special,  exceptional  know- 
ledge, quite  different  from  that  of  natural  acumen  or 
religious  genius.  Of  this  claim  i  Cor.  ii.  14  is  but  a 
sample.  The  natural  man,  however  brilliant  or  shrewd, 
receiveth  not  the  things  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  for  they 
are  spiritually  discerned.  "  He  that  is  spiritual  "  (which 
for  Paul  did  not  mean  he  that  has  spirituality,  but  he 
that  has  the  miraculous  and  specific  gift  of  the  Spirit, 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  163 

the  new  life  of  the  New  Creation,  which  makes  a  man 
a  Christian)   "juJgeth  all  things   and  is  beyond  man's 
judgment."     Or  again,  v.    16,  "We   have    the  mind  of 
Christ."    The  context  shows  that  this  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  temper  of  Christ,  or  what  is  now  known  as  the 
Christian  spirit.      And  the  "we"  is  admitted  to  mean 
the    Apostles,   as  distinct   from  the  initiates  they  were 
teaching.     The    meaning    is   that,   by  the   supernatural 
gift    of   the   Spirit,  possessed  only  in  the  Church,  Paul 
h  id    knowledge   of    the    intention    of    Christ,     Christ's 
implicit  thought,  God's  meaning  in  Christ,  the  theology 
of   Christ   and    the   cross.      That    is  what    Paul   meant 
(whether  he  was  right  in  thus  thinking  he  had  Christ's 
theology    or     not).        So     it    was   not    only    that    the 
Apostles   were    in    closer    historic    proximity    to   Jesus 
than  other   men,    though   that  makes  them  historically 
unique.     Nor   was   it  only  that   they  had  the  common 
faith  which  marked  them  off  from  the  world  by  a  new 
creation,    as    members    of    the    Church.       Nor   was   it 
only   that    this   faith   acted   on    a   natural    endowment 
which  tended  to  religious  exaltation,  not  only  that  some 
of  them  were  religious  geniuses,  flushed  with  a  new  en- 
thusiasm, and  kindled  to  unusual  insight.     But,  by  their 
own  account,  they  were  uniquely  instructed  by  the  Spirit, 
and  not  merely  renewed.     They  had    what  they  called 
"  the  gift  of   knowledge  "  as  a  charisma  of  the  Spirit. 
Truly  it  was  in  no  ecstatic  way,  in  no  trance  or  such 
like  thing.    The  spirit  did  not  act  merely  by  exalting  their 
whole  nature  to  a  pitch  of  unique  sensibility.     Sensibility 
does  not  always  mean  insight.     But  indeed  it  is  no  more 
possible  to  describe  the  inner  psychology  of  inspiration 
in  the  apostles  than  in  the  prophets.     Many  Christians 
had    both    the    Christian  facts   and    the  Christian  faitli 


164  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  ChrUt         [lect. 

who  never  rose  to  inspiration.  They  had  only  personal 
religion  in  the  Spirit.  But  with  the  Apostles  it  was  a 
special  gift  of  the  Spirit,  not  enlarging  the  revelation  in 
matter  but  certainly  opening  its  interior  and  pointing 
its  form.  It  was  the  action  upon  them  of  the  ascended 
and  reigning  Christ — his  instruction.  Especially  so 
when  the  call  came  to  write,  when  the  trying  hour  and 
the  anointed  spirit  met.  Paul  was  more  inspired  in  this 
Corinthian  chapter  than  in  the  third  heaven ;  so  close  is 
inspiration  to  history.  Besides  the  living  faith  and  the 
special  chrism  their  natural  possibilities  were  roused  also 
by  the  actual  junctures  in  which  they  found  themselves. 
The  occasion  of  writing  was  some  providential  juncture 
in  the  affairs  of  the  Church ;  and  they  managed  and 
directed  that  juncture  as  men  writing  of  final  truths 
in  which  they  habitually  lived,  truths  given  them  to 
see  by  the  indwelling  Lord.  They  claimed  to  possess 
absolute  certainty  about  the  greatest  things  of  God 
and  the  Soul,  and  the  central  action  of  Christ  and 
His  cross.  They  shared  the  self-certainty  of  Christ. 
They  do  not  write  as  if  any  interpretation  of  Christ 
besides  their  own  was  thinkable.  And  they  make  a 
distinction,  which  was  mostly  clear  to  themselves, 
between  what  they  gave  as  the  mind  or  intention 
of  Christ  and  what  they  did  not  so  give.  For  some  of 
their  words  they  claimed  a  like  authority  with  that  of 
Christ.  They  claimed  the  obedience  that  the  Church 
would  give  to  Christ  (2  Cor.  ii.  9  ;  vii.  15,  Acts  xv.  28). 
The  whole  of  i  Cor.  ii.  is  of  classic  value  for  the  Apostle's 
view  of  his  own  inspiration ;  and  it  certainly  does  not 
allow  us  to  think  that  he  regarded  himself  as  groping 
after  great  truths,  making  great  guesses,  or  feeling  about 
at  an  inchoate  stage  in  the  understanding  of  Christ  and 
his  work. 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  165 

§         §         § 
Now  was  this  sense  of  unique  insight  and  final  inter. 

pretation  a  delusion  ?     Was  it  inflation  or  inspiration  ? 

Was  it  ideal  obsession  or  divine  visitation  ?     Were  the 

apostles  megalomaniacs  ?    And  yet  founded  the  Church  ? 

1.  We  may  note  here  that  their  belief  in  their  own 
position  and  knowledge  was  accepted  by  the  Church 
then,  and  has  been  corrobated  by  the  Church  ever  since. 
It  came  home  with  the  demonstration  of  the  Spirit  and 
of  power  (Rom.  i.  16,  i  Cor.  ii.  4,  i  Th.  i.  5,  Ep.  vi.  17). 
And  it  is  what  has  survived. 

2.  It  had  been  provided  for  by  Christ,  who  said  that 
in  the  great  crises  not  they  should  speak  but  the  Spirit 
of  God  should  speak  in  them.     (Mat.  x.  20,  xvi.  19.) 

3.  It  was  the  same  note  of  authority  and  finality  as 
sounds  through  all  the  prophets,  who,  over  and  over, 
speak  their  words  not  only  in  God's  name  but  in  the  first 
person,  as  if,  for  the  hour  at  least,  not  they  lived  but 
God  lived  in  them. 

4.  The  apostles  claimed  for  their  words,  especially  on 
Eternal  Truth,  a  like  permanent  authority  with  Christ's. 
They  even  ignore  his  precepts,  which  they  seldom  or 
never  quote  to  their  Churches;  they  make  their  own, 
and  they  expect  for  them  the  obedience  due  to  Christ. 
In  their  preaching,  moreover,  they  drop  his  parable  style 
for  one  of  their  own.  And  the  homiletic  of  the  Church 
followed  them  in  this,  and  did  not  copy  either  the 
synoptic  or  the  Johannine  style  of  address,  and  certainly 
not  Christ's  conversational  dialectic.  In  i  Thess.  iv.  15 
we  have,  "  I  say  unto  you  by  the  word  of  the  Lord,"  as 
we  have  it  also  in  i  Kings  xiii.  17.  In  Gal.  vi.  2  we  find 
"  Bear  ye  one  another's  burdens,  and  so  fulfil  the  law  of 
Christ,"     But    there    is    no    such    precept    from  Christ 

N 


i66  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

that  we  know  of.  The  law  is  fashioned  by  the  apostle 
out  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ.  Yet  how  easy  it  would  have 
been  to  refer  to  some  such  precept  of  Christ  as  the  new 
commandment  to  love  one  another  and  to  minister  to 
the  brethren  as  he  did.  So,  i  Cor.  vii.  lo,  "  I  give 
charge,  yet  not  I,  but  the  Lord."  On  this  ground 
the  apostles  claimed,  for  their  precept  if  not  their  person, 
the  obedience  really  due  to  one  whom  the  Church 
worshipped.  (2  Cor.  ii.  7,  g,  15,  2  Th.  ii.  15,  Acts  xv.  28.) 
They  were  not  indeed  reincarnations  of  the  Incarnate, 
but  they  were  his  organs.  The  source  of  their  certainty 
was  one  quite  different  from  reason  and  its  proof  (i 
Cor.  ii.  4,  and  especially  verse  12  ;  what  they  knew  was 
"  things  given  by  God  "). 

The  process  of  this  certainty  and  authority,  the 
psychology  of  it  they  could  not  explain  even  to  themselves 
(i  Peter  i.  10).  It  was  not  irrational,  but  it  was  alogical. 
Their  central  truth  was  a  supernatural  gift ;  it  was  not 
an  achievement  or  a  discovery  of  theirs. 

5.  What  they  saw  and  said  in  this  way  was  not  for 
them  the  revelation  but  the  interpretation  of  the 
revelation.  It  was  not  given  them  by  a  second 
revelation ;  it  was  given  by  insight  into  the  one  and 
only  revelation ;  by  the  finished  revelation  filling  itself 
out  in  them;  by  the  inspiration  that  distended  the 
material  fact,  and  thus  formally  completed  the  revelation. 
They  saw  and  they  said  what  Christ  was,  not  what  an 
imaginative  intelligence  surmised.  They  translated 
Christ,  the  text,  who  without  the  translation  would 
have  been  a  dead  letter  so  far  as  history  is  concerned. 
They  treated  their  text  exegetically,  not  fantastically, 
not  ingeniously.  What  they  gave  was  the  meaning  of 
Christ;  and    they  gave    it    in    a   way  that    the   earthly 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  167 

Christ  himself  could  not— in  the  light  of  his  finished 
work.  The  finishing  of  that  work  by  the  cross  was 
not  always  perfectly  certain  in  Christ's  earthly  thought ; 
even  in  Gethsemane,  I  have  said,  he  cherished  the  hope 
that  there  might  still  open  from  the  Father's  will  some 
other  way.  But  for  Paul  the  cross  had  come  and  gone 
— or  rather  had  come  to  remain  as  the  pivot  and  key  of 
all.  The  apostles'  inspiration  was  the  interpretation  of 
the  cross  as  being  the  revelation  of  all  the  revelation  in 
Christ.  We  have  in  it  not  only  the  impression  on 
them  from  the  historic  Christ  but  the  tremendous  action 
on  them  of  Christ  the  glorified,  of  Christ  in  the  heavenly 
close  and  consummation  of  all  that  he  was  (and  of  all 
that  history  was),  in  his  cross,  resurrection,  and  glory. 
Their  inspiration  formed  the  coda  of  the  crowning 
movement  in  the  total  work  of  Christ.  What  they 
spoke  was  the  secret  in  the  cross,  the  wisdom  that 
God  had  hidden  away  from  thought  in  the  mystery,  or 
sacrament,  of  the  cross  (i  Cor.  ii.  7).  They  expounded 
the  sacrament  of  Godhead,  God  manifest  in  the  flesh. 
Their  inspiration  was  to  set  forth  in  word  and  thought 
the  principle  and  power  of  that  supreme  sacrament  of 
the  Word,  namely  Christ ;  it  was  to  exhibit  formally 
the  truth  materially  embodied  in  the  manifestation. 
Their  work  on  it  was  analytic  and  not  synthetic.  Their 
metier  was  the  knowledge  of  things  already  given,  i  Cor. 
ii.  12.  It  was  to  set  forth  the  inwardness  of  the  historic 
fact  and  spectacle.  It  was  the  searching  of  the  deep 
things  of  God,  the  exhibition  of  what  was  hidden 
(hidden,  possibly,  even  from  the  earthly  consciousness 
of  Christ  himself),  interpreting  such  spiritual  things  to 
spiritual  men  (i  Cor.  ii.   13). 

And  this  they  do  not  only  through  the  psychological 


i68  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

effect  of  the  manifestation    upon  their  souls,  but  much 
more,  through    the   selective,   the  miraculous   action    in 
them  of  the    same    Christ   who  was  the    manifestation, 
and    is   now   in    them   his   own   interpreter.     They   did 
not    simply   echo   the    cross ;    they   were    anointed    by 
Christ  to  decipher  it.     The  apostolic  inspiration  is  the 
posthumous   exposition    by    Christ    of   His   own    work  ; 
and    it    takes   as   much    precedence  of  his   earthly  and 
(partly)  interim  teaching  as  the    finished  work  is   more 
luminous  than  the  work  in  process.     If  Paul  felt  at  his 
vital    moments    that   not    he   lived    but    Christ  lived    in 
him,  then,  surely  in  the   great   matters  of  insight   and 
seasons  of  speech,  it  was  not  he  that  spoke  but  Christ 
that  spoke  in  him.     And  if,  as  Peter  says  (i    Peter   i. 
lo),  the  prophets  had  to  study  and  clarify  for  themselves, 
by    their   inspiration,    things   that   were   given   them  to 
do  or  speak  more  greatly  than  they  knew,  so  we  may 
venture    to    say,    perhaps    {mutatis   mutandis),    that    the 
spiritual    Christ   himself,    looking   back  from    his   glory 
on  the  work  of  his  humiliation,  and  still  ministering  it  to 
history,  opened  up  his  manifestation  then  by  his  inspira- 
tion in  the  apostles,   in  whom  he  dwelt  and   prolonged 
his  work  through  its  actual  to  its  vocal  close. 

§  §  § 
So  let  us  aim  at  some  clearness  when  we  say  that  Chris- 
tianity is  Christ.  The  essence  of  Christianity  is  not  in  the 
bare  fact,  but  in  the  fact  and  its  interpretation.  It  is  not 
in  a  mere  historic  Jesus,  evidentially  irresistible,  but  in  a 
Christ  evangelically  irresistible,  a  Christ  who  is  the  medi- 
ator of  the  grace  of  God.  Is  this  not  so  in  regard  to  the 
Old  Testament  ?  Where  is  our  perennial  interest  there  ? 
Not  in  the  chronicle  but  in  the  message,  the  purpose  in  it. 
The  Old  Testament  is  valuable  neither  as  a  history  of  Israel, 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  169 

nor  as  a  history  of  religion,  but  as  a  history  of  revelation, 
of  grace,  of  redemption.     And  the  new  scholarship  has 
done  us  an  unspeakable  service  in  planting  us  at  the  outset 
at  the  part  of  the  Old  Testament  which  contains  that 
interpretation,  in  planting  us  on  the   prophets.     It  has 
moved  our  starting  point  from  the  historic  books  to  the 
prophetic,   from  the  narrators  to  the  preachers  of   the 
Old  Testament,  from  the  history  to  the  inspiration.     It 
has  made   the  inspiration    of    the   Apostles  of  the  Old 
Testament    the    standpoint  from  which  all  the  story  is 
to  be  read  and  construed.     They  do  not  so  much  give  us 
Israel  as  what  God  meant  by  Israel.     And    it   is    only 
carrying  the  same  method  into  the  New  Testament  when 
we  fix  on  the  Epistles  with  their  dogmatic  element,  and 
make  that  the  view-point  from  which  the  fact  is  to  be 
read  and  the  gospels  themselves  interpreted.     It  is    in 
these  interpreting  books  that  the  inspiration  lies  rather 
than  in  the  narrative.     There  is  more  inspiration  in  the 
Epistles  than  in  the  Gospels,  as  Luther  truly  said.    That 
is  to  say,  in  the  total  revelation  the  inspirational  element 
predominates    in    the    Epistles    and    the    exhibitionary 
element  in  the  gospels.     It  is  in   the  Epistles  that  we 
have  the  essence  of  Christianity,  what  the  fact  means  for 
God,  and  grace,  and  man.     It    is   there  the  heart  of  the 
fact  ceases  to  be  dumb.     And  it  is  there  that  we  have 
the  fixed  point  from  which  to  exercise  the  critical  method 
upon  the  Gospels  with  truly  religious  historic  and  scien- 
tific effect.     It  is  the  whole  Biblical  Christ  that  is  the 
truly  and  deeply  historic  Christ. 

§         §         § 
What  we  have,  therefore,  is  results  like  these. 
I.  God  does  in  Christ  the  one  thing  needful  for  the  holy 
redemption  of  the  race    into  the  kingdom.     This  thing 


170  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

done  is  the  power  and  action  of  God  unto  salvation.  It 
is  not  merely  a  source  of  power  to  us  if  we  use  it,  but  it 
is  the  act  of  God  finished  for  us  in  Heavenly  places.  In 
Christ  God  redeemed  once  for  all. 

2.  To  make  this  effective  in  history  it  must  be  declared. 
What  is  the  work  for  us  without  its  word  ?  It  must  be 
interpreted,  unfolded,  in  thought  and  speech,  else  men 
would  not  know  they  were  saved.  The  work  alone 
would  be  dumb  as  the  word  alone  would  be  empty. 

There  are  some  who  recognise  in  Christ's  death  no  action 
beyond  what  it  had,  and  has  increasingly,  upon  mankind. 
It  did  not  act  on  God  but  only  from  Him.  Those  who 
so  think  may  be  particularly  asked  what  provision  Christ 
made  that  a  work  with  that  sole  object  should  be  secured 
to  act  on  history,  and  should  not  go  to  waste.  He  wrote 
nothing  himself.  If  he  had  it  could  not  well  have 
included  the  effect  of  his  death — unless  he  had  done  with 
a  posthumous  pen  what  my  plea  is  he  did  by  his  Apostles. 
He  did  not  even  give  instructions  for  a  written  account 
which  should  be  a  constant  source  for  the  effect  on  us 
intended  by  his  life.  Nor  did  he  take  any  precautions 
against  perversions  in  its  tradition.  Yet  it  is  hard  to 
think  that  a  mind  capable  of  so  great  a  design  on  pos- 
terity should  neglect  to  secure  that  his  deed  and  its  sig- 
nificance should  reach  them  in  some  authentic  way.  He 
surely  could  not  put  himself  into  so  great  an  enterprise, 
and  then  leave  it  adrift  on  history,  liable  to  the  accidents 
of  time  or  the  idiosyncracy  of  his  followers.  He  could 
not  be  indifferent  whether  an  effective  record  and  inter- 
pretation of  his  work  should  survive  or  not.  He  would 
then  have  shown  himself  unable  to  rear  the  deed  he  brought 
forth.  It  would  have  been  stillborn  unless  the  close  of 
it  in  some  way  secured  its  action  on  the  posterity  which 


VI.]  The  Testimony  oj  Apostolic  Inspiration  171 

we  are  told  was  its  sole  destination,  on  those  whom  alone 
it  was  to  affect  or  benefit.  But  that  completion  of  his 
work  he  did  secure  if  he  inspired  its  transmission  and 
interpretation  in  the  Bible.  If  he  died  to  make  a  Church 
that  Church  should  continue  to  be  made  by  some  per- 
manent thing  from  himself,  either  by  a  continuous 
Apostolate  supernaturally  secured  in  the  charisma  veritatis, 
as  Rome  claims,  or  by  a  book  which  should  be  the  real 
successor  of  the  Apostles,  with  a  real  authority  on  the 
vital  matters  of  truth  and  faith.  But,  we  discard  the 
supernatural  pope  for  the  supernatural  book.  And  so  we 
come  back,  enriched  by  all  we  have  learned  from  repudi- 
ating a  verbal  inspiration  and  accepting  an  inspiration  of 
men  and  souls,  to  a  better  way  of  understanding  the 
authority  that  there  is  in  the  inspiration  of  a  book,  a  canon. 
We  move  from  an  institutional  authority  to  a  biblical ;  and 
then  from  Biblicism  we  advance  to  Evangelism.  But  it 
is  an  Evangelism  bound  up  with  a  book  because  bound 
up  with  history.  The  Bible  is  a  historic  book  in  a  sense 
far  other  than  the  Koran.  There  is  more  in  the  matter 
than  personal  inspiration,  just  as  there  is  more  in  the 
corporate  Church  than  a  group  of  sacred  souls.  Were 
personal  inspiration  all,  the  end  might  have  been  reached 
by  one  great  hierophant.  But  we  have  a  group  of  them, 
with  a  central  message  in  common,  however  complemen- 
tary its  various  aspects  are,  however  contradictory  even 
some  of  its  minor  aspects  might  be.  And  this  because, 
for  all  the  pronounced  personality  of  each  Apostle,  he 
was  yet  the  representative  of  a  whole  Church,  an  Eternal 
Saviour,  and  a  universal  salvation.  The  interpretation  of 
the  manifold  work  of  Christ  should  be  a  corporate  matter. 
The  salvation  of  the  whole  Church  could  not  be  duly 
interpreted  by  one  man  in  it  ;  one  man  could   not  even 


172  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

make  a  liturgy  for  a  Church ;  any  such  man  would  be 
too  nearly  its  Saviour  or  its  Intercessor.  Therefore  in 
apostles,  chosen  at  his  will,  the  sole  Saviour  became  the 
sole  interpreter,  so  far  as  the  elements  were  concerned 
which  made  him  Saviour.  He  was  the  real  author  of 
the  New  Testament  (if  the  image  might  be  pardoned), 
with  the  Apostles,  as  it  were,  but  his  staff,  though  with 
a  very  free  hand.  He  rounded  off  his  great  work  by  in- 
spiring an  authoritative  account  of  it,  in  records  which 
are  not  mere  documents,  but  are  themselves  acts  within 
his  integral  and  historic  act  of  salvation.  They  are 
spiritual  sources  and  not  historic  memoranda — sacraments 
even  more  than  sources.  And  they  have  an  authority  of 
their  own  greater  than  is  due  to  mere  proximit}' — how- 
ever we  may  be  guided  by  the  critics,  as  subalterns  of  the 
same  spirit,  in  adjusting  the  fabric  or  cleansing  its  face. 

There  are  two  classes  of  historical  document.  There 
are  those  that  simply  report  a  transaction  as  a  narrative 
of  it  might  do,  either  in  a  book  or  a  newspaper. 
And  there  are  documents  which  are  documents  in  the 
case,  which,  like  treaties,  focus  the  action,  form  an 
integral  part  of  the  deed  itself,  and  carry  not  only  the 
consent  which  made  the  act,  but  the  signature  which 
sends  it  forth,  and  perhaps  codicils  of  authoritative 
explanation.  The  New  Testament  writings  (taken  of 
course  out  of  the  ban  of  verbal  inspiration,  or  of  an  equal 
inspiration  in  every  part),  belong  to  the  second  class. 
They  are  part  of  the  whole  transaction,  integral  to  the 
great  deed.  And  we  do  not  get  the  whole  Christ  or  his 
work  without  them. 

The  same  Christ,  the  same  Spirit  *  as   acted    in   the 

♦••Christ,  who  by  the  Eternal  Spirit,  offered  Himself  unto  God."  I 
cannot  here  enter  on  the  difficult  question  raised  by  the  phrase  "  The  Lord 
is  the  Spirit." 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  173 

redeeming  deed  acted  also  in  the  interpretation  ;  and 
with  a  like  novelty,  a  like  originality,  a  like  miraculous, 
creative,  and  final  power — with  a  like  absolute  origin- 
ality, but  in  a  different  form.  The  New  Testament,  we 
have  seen,  is  an  integral  part  of  a  binary  revelation, 
which  consists  of  the  manifestation  and  the  inspiration  or 
interpretation  which  the  manifestation  itself  creates,  and 
creates  both  from  its  historic  base  and  from  its  home 
in  the  unseen.  The  difference  of  this  inspiration  from 
every  other  lies  in  the  unique  nature  of  the  personal 
fact,  in  the  generic  difference  from  every  other  deed 
of  the  deed  whose  spirit  was  in  both — both  in  the  fact 
and  in  the  interpretation — the  deed  of  the  Cross. 

§         §         § 
3.  I  have  said  that  the  New  Testament  writings  have 

the  originality  belonging  to  the  fact  and  work  of  Christ, 

though    in  a    form   different  from   what    it  had    in    his 

personality.     I  go  on  to  say  that  it  is  in  a  form  different 

also  from  our  apprehension  of  the  fact  through  them.  As 

we  have  God  by  the  miracle  of  Christ,  so  we  have  Christ 

by  the  miracle  of  the  apostolic  inspiration.     (Mat.  xi.  27, 

xvi.  17).     If  the  manifested  deed  is  miraculous,  so  is  the 

inspired.      The   apostles'   understanding  of  the    cross  is 

miraculous,  like  the  cross  itself.     It  is  there  by  the  direct 

and  specific  action  of  the   same  Spirit  as  that  by  which 

Christ  offered    himself  to  God,  though  the  action  took 

another    form.     So   also    the    form    of  our    illumination 

through  the  apostles  is  different  from  theirs  by  the  very 

fact  that  they  had   no  apostles  to  mediate   the  truth  to 

them.     As  Christ  was  the  direct   mediator  of  the  work 

itself,  having  himself  no  Saviour,  so  the  apostles  are  the 

direct   mediators  of  the  central   truth  about  it,  having 

therein  no  human  revealers.     They  were  untaught  by  the 


174  ^^^  Person  and  Place  of  Jems  Christ         [lect. 

words  of  any  man's  wisdom  in  the  great  leap  of  finding 
in  Christ  the  reality  of  whatever  ideas  they  had  learned 
from  the  age  around  them. 

§         §         § 
4.  The  production,  then,  of  this  original  and  unique 

understanding  of  Christ  in  the  apostles  is  inspiration.  Of 
its  psychology,  as  I  have  said,  we  know  little  or  nothing. 
The  men  may  have  known  little.  At  least  they  have 
left  us  little.  It  was  quite  different  from  the  trances  of 
which  Paul  had  experience,  but  which  he  does  not  treat 
as  sources  of  inspiration.  When  he  was  beside  himself 
the  matter  was  between  him  and  God  alone;  it  was  in  his 
personal  religion.  But  when  it  was  a  matter  of  inspira- 
tion and  of  interpreting  Christ  to  history,  to  men,  he  was 
sober  for  their  sakes.  (2  Cor.  v.  13.)  His  inspiration 
was  more  than  the  originality  of  genius.  In  Galatians, 
you  may  remember,  by  a  wonderful  flash  he  inverted  the 
values  of  Old  Testament  history,  and  put  prophetic 
gospel  before  statutory  law  even  in  historic  order. 
(Gal.  iii.  and  esp.  ver.  17).  It  was  an  intuition  that 
arose  from  no  scholarship,  but  from  his  powerful  grasp 
of  the  principle  of  the  Gospel  which  Christ  had  revealed 
to  him  as  so  revolutionary  for  the  world.  It  was  his 
theology  that  enabled  him  to  divine  what  criticism  has 
only  verified.  It  was  a  divination  greater  than  that 
of  the  line  of  scholarly  genius  which  has  recently  set 
his  inversion  upon  a  scientific  base,  and  critically  shown 
the  prophets  to  precede  at  least  the  most  legal  part  of 
the  law.  The  apostolic  inspiration  was  also  more  than 
the  originality  of  a  great  poet  like  Milton,  who  presents 
life,  but  not  God,  under  aspects  so  fresh,  new,  and  deep. 
It  answers  the  question.  What  is  He  going  to  do  with  us  ? 
It   is   concerned   with    God's   whole   and    final    purpose 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  175 

for  man  and  history,  and  with  the  inversion  of  man's 
thought  and  action  about  it  by  the  cross.  Through 
Christ,  then,  this  redemption  took  place  ;  through  the 
apostles'  interpretation  it  entered  history.  He  did  the 
thing,  they  saw  its  meaning  and  proclaimed  it ;  and  they 
knew  they  were  doing  so  in  a  final  way,  though  not  in  a 
final  system.  If  Christ  had  not  done  the  thing,  but  only 
proclaimed  God's  doing  of  it,  the  apostles  would  have 
been  but  his  pupils  and  successors  in  the  work,  instead  of 
his  subjects  and  organs.  But  He  revolutionised  man's 
relation  to  God,  and  thus  revolutionised  human  nature; 
they  made  the  change  current  and  set  it  afloat  in  history. 
But  as  the  act  of  Christ  was  one  which  no  genius 
could  do,  so  the  apostles,  as  integral  agents  of  that 
act  by  way  of  its  interpretation,  were  in  a  different 
category  from  religious  genius  ;  however  their  native 
religious  sensibility  may  have  been  the  point  of  attach- 
ment for  the  Spirit's  use  of  them. 

§         §         § 
5.  It  may  be  asked  whether  the  synoptic  Christ,  when 

read  without  the  medium  of  the  epistles,  could  have 
floated  Christianity  out  into  the  world.  The  first  answer 
to  that  is  that  the  three  gospels  were  written  for  people 
living  in  the  theological  atmosphere  of  the  epistles.  The 
second  answer  is  No,  by  themselves  they  could  not  have 
launched  the  faith,  so  far  as  we  can  see.  If  we  ask 
farther,  could  the  Synoptics  keep  Christianity  a  world 
power  now,  with  the  certain  reversion  of  the  world's 
mastery  soon  or  late?  Again,  No.  It  was  the  interpre- 
tation in  John  or  in  Paul  that  made  Christianity  historical 
for  men— though  it  was  Christ's  act  that  made  it  vital 
for  God  and  God's  treatment  of  men.  The  one  gathered 
and  impelled  the  race  which  the  other  had  redeemed  by 


176  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

a  new  creation.  The  act  made  the  soul,  the  gospel  of  it 
made  the  Church.  Or  again,  if  it  is  asked  whether,  with 
Loisy  at  one  end  or  Dale  at  the  other,  we  could  dissolve 
the  Gospels  and  leave  their  Christianity,  the  answer 
must  be  a  very  clear.  No.  You  cannot  sever  the  life 
from  the  word  and  keep  the  Church  as  a  vitality  detached 
from  the  message  of  the  cross. 

§  §  § 
Apostolic  inspiration,  therefore,  is  a  certain  action 
stirred  by  the  heavenly  Christ  in  the  soul,  by  which  his 
first  elect  were  enabled  to  see  the  moral,  spiritual,  and 
theological  nature  of  the  manifestation  with  a  unique 
clearness,  a  clearness  and  explicitness  perhaps  not 
always  present  to  Christ's  own  mind  in  doing  the  act. 
Inspiration  is  thus  much  more  than  the  impression 
made  by  Christ's  character  or  personality.  It  was  a 
special  charisma,  the  charisma  distinguished  from  others 
by  Paul  himself  as  that  of  wisdom  and  knowledge,  i  Cor. 
xii.  8  ;  where  it  is  put  first,  as  if  it  were  the  apostolic 
prerogative. 

§         §         § 

Of  course,  any  modern  theory  of  inspiration  dis- 
tinguishes between  miraculous  insight  and  miraculous 
dictation,  between  finality  and  infallibility  of  interpreta^ 
tion.  The  notion  of  the  writers  as  being  mere  penmen  is 
quite  incompatible  with  the  great  description  of  inspiration 
in  I  Peter  i.  10,  which  at  least  indicates  the  psychological 
and  even  critical  atmosphere  in  which  the  supernatural 
gift  worked.  We  must  connect  inspiration  with  the 
personal  and  moral  experience  of  the  inspired  (little  as 
that  fact  entitles  us  to  bemean  the  great  word  inspiration 
as  we  do  to-day  in  using  it  of  the  personal  experience  of 
faith's  rank  and  file,  and  even  of  happy  suggestions   in 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apoatnlic  Tmtpiraiion  177 

common  affairs).  It  was  not  hierophantic.  It  was  not 
the  communication  of  occult  truths  quite  unapprehended. 
It  was  not  psychological  magic.  True,  it  is  of  the  nature 
of  genius,  which  is  always  inexplicable — only  it  is  more 
so.  But  genius  is  an  innate  predisposition,  while  this  is 
a  positive  gift  at  a  later  stage,  and  on  the  top  even  of 
genius.  Genius  is  an  election,  this  is  more,  it  is  a  special 
call.  Genius  is  impelled  from  within,  this  is  moved  from 
without.  Genius  has  its  inspiration  in  the  nature  of 
the  man's  personality,  this  has  its  inspiration  from  the 
positive  nature  and  action  of  a  manifestation  which  visits 
it.  Genius  works  itself  out,  this  works  out  the  fact  and 
the  person  with  whom  it  is  in  such  causal  and  organic 
connexion.  It  is  true  that  for  Paul  the  Gospel  of  Christ 
did  not  mean  the  personal  religion  of  Jesus ;  it  was  a 
faith  of  which  Jesus  was  the  object,  and  not  the  subject. 
And  yet  he  was  its  subject,  in  that  it  came  from  him — 
not,  however,  from  his  earthly  teaching,  but  from  his 
heavenly  glory  in  his  task  for  ever  done.  For  Paul  the 
Gospel  of  Christ  was  not  only  a  Gospel  which  treated  of 
Christ,  but  one  which  proceeded  from  Christ.  It  did  not 
come  from  the  teaching  and  partial  Christ  (whose  teach- 
ings, if  they  were  to  be  more  relevant  than  a  dreamer's  to 
an  incomplete  historic  situation,  must  have  been  also  in- 
complete), but  from  the  whole  Christ  in  his  complete  per- 
son and  act.  To  divide  up  the  personality,  and  detach 
the  heavenly  Christ  from  the  earthly  Jesus  is  not  a  feat 
of  criticism  so  much  as  a  failure  of  religion,  or  an  intel- 
lectual freak  and  a  confession  of  unfaith. 

Apostolic  authority,  therefore,  is  not  official  but  per- 
sonal, not  statutory  but  experimental,  not  external  but 
internal,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  a  thing  of  the  soul  and 
not  of  a    mere  society  or  its  heads.     The  apostles  are 


178  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

authoritative,  not  because  they  were  in  the  Gospel  group, 
not  because  they  formed  a  college  to  which  Christ  had 
given  a  charter.  For  I  have  said  that  not  all  the  group 
of  disciples  became  apostles ;  and  the  greatest  apostle 
was  not  in  the  group.  But  the  apostolic  authority  is 
that  of  those  who  by  a  spiritual  election  had  a  gift  of 
supernatural  insight — and  insight  is  always  more  or  less 
miraculous,  whether  naturally  in  a  genius  or  super- 
naturally  in  an  apostle.  Why  should  we  resent  it  ?  We 
do  not  resent  the  authority  of  the  real  illuminates  else- 
where. For  in  its  nature  it  is  inward  and  congenial 
to  the  soul,  however  outward  it  may  be  in  spatial 
position  or  historic  sequence,  or  in  its  spiritual  invasion 
of  our  consciousness. 

§         §         § 

As  to  the  authority  of  the  Bible,  especially  on  a  matter 
like  the  Godhead  of  Christ,  we  may  note  this.  The 
mere  historical  aspect  of  the  Bible  is  a  matter  of  learned 
inquiry.  Its  evidence  for  a  mere  historical  fact  must 
stand  at  what  it  is  historically  worth.  The  difficulty 
only  begins  with  facts  which  are  more  than  merely 
historical,  whose  value  lies  not  in  their  occurrence,  but 
in  their  nature,  meaning,  and  effect.  It  is  not  the 
crucifixion  that  matters  but  the  cross.  So  it  is  not 
reanimation  but  resurrection.  And  here  the  authority  of 
the  Bible  speaks  not  to  the  critical  faculty  that  handles 
evidence  but  to  the  soul  that  makes  response.  The 
Bible  witness  of  salvation  in  Christ  is  felt  immediately  to 
have  authority  by  every  soul  pining  for  redemption.  It 
is  not  so  much  food  for  the  rationally  healthy,  but  it  is 
medicine  for  the  sick,  and  life  for  the  dead.  All  the 
highest  interpretation  of  the  Bible  comes  from  that 
principle  of  grace.     Even  historical  criticism,  which  is  a 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  lyg 

real  part  of  theology,  should  be  pursued  on  that  basis. 
It  should  be  a  work  of  the  Church  much  more  than  of 
the  schools.  And  from  the  Church  must  come  the  final 
correction  and  appraisement  of  the  criticism  of  the 
schools.  It  is  only  knowledge  with  a  soul  of  faith  that 
grasps  the  full  scope  of  revelationary  history.  For  it  is 
the  history  of  a  revelation  we  have  to  do  with  in 
Christianity,  it  is  not  a  revelation  of  history.  Mere 
history  does  not  need  to  be  revealed  ;  it  can  look  after 
itself  by  its  own  scientific  methods. 

The  authority  in  the  Bible  is  more  than  the  authority 
of  the  Bible  ;  and  it  is  the  historic  and  present  Christ  as 
Saviour.  The  Gospel  and  not  the  book  is  the  true 
region  of  inspiration  or  infallibility — the  discovery  of 
the  one  Gospel  in  Christ  and  His  cross.  That  is  the 
sphere  of  inspiration.  That  is  where  inspiration  is 
infallible.  Inspired  men  have  been  wrong  on  points  and 
in  modes  of  argument — just  as,  even  with  Christ  living  in 
them,  they  sinned  in  life.  They  have  not  always  been 
right  by  the  event.  But  they  were  right  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  Gospel  in  Christ  as  the  final  work  of  a 
holy  God  for  the  race.  They  were  not  infallible,  but 
they  were  penetrating  and  they  were  final,  final  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  Gospel,  of  Christ,  and  of  the  Church. 
The  true  region  of  Bible  authority  is  therefore  saving 
certainty  in  man's  central  and  final  part — his  conscience 
before  God.  And  all  its  parts  are  authoritative  in  the 
degree  and  perspective  of  their  relation  to  that  final 
salvation.  What  distinguishes  the  Bible  from  other 
books  is  not  appreciable  by  those  that  seek  no  revelation, 
no  spiritual  footing,  no  other  world  amid  this,  and  no 
security  in  the  other  world.  It  is  only  intelligible  in  its 
core  to  those  who  are  being  saved  in   some  positive  way. 


i8o  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

It  is  to  what  the  Reformers  called  justifying  faith  that 
the  Bible  appears  most  unique  and  authoritative — to 
faith  in  a  justifying  God.  And  it  has  been  said  that  the 
canon  is  authoritative  so  far  as  this,  at  least,  that  we 
have  no  writings  outside  it  that  could  eject  one  of  those 
within. 

It  is  by  the  Bible  that  Christ  chiefly  works  on  history. 
All  the  Church's  preaching  and  work  is  based  on  it,  on 
what  we  only  know  through  it.  As  no  man  could  succeed 
the  apostles  in  their  unique  position  and  work,  but  their 
book  became  their  true  successor,  so  no  book  can  replace 
this.  The  apostles  are  gone  but  the  book  remains,  to 
prolong  their  supernatural  vision,  and  exercise  their 
authority  in  the  Church.  In  so  far  as  the  Church  pro- 
longs the  manifestation  and  is  Christ's  body,  the  Bible 
prolongs  the  inspiration  and  is  Christ's  word.  The 
writers  were  and  are  the  only  authentic  interpreters  of 
Christ.  They  said  so,  under  the  immediate  shadow  of 
Christ's  action  on  them,  whether  his  historic  or  his 
heavenly  action.  They  never  contemplate  being  super- 
seded on  the  great  witness  till  Christ  came.  If  they  are 
wrong  in  that,  where  are  they  right  ?  And  where  are  we 
to  turn  ?  To  a  critical  construction  of  what  they  said — 
they  including  the  evangelists  ?  But  does  that  not  make 
the  critics,  the  constructors,  to  be  the  true  Apostolate  ? 
And  if  it  come  to  construction  (as  I  have  already  said)  I 
prefer  the  Apostolic  to  the  critical,  if  we  must  be  forced 
on  a  choice.  If  the  Bible  is  not  inspired  but  only 
documentary  we  are  at  the  critic's  mercy.  For  what 
does  it  give  us  apart  from  its  inspiration  ?  Nothing 
of  Christ's,  but  only  of  the  Apostles.  In  so  far  as  it  is  a 
record  it  is  not  so  much  a  record  or  document  of  Christ 
but  of  the  apostolic  view  and  message  of  Christ  in  his 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  i8i 

salvation.  But  it  is  really  a  document  for  apostolic 
inspiration,  for  the  apostolic  reading  of  history,  rather 
than  for  history  as  such.  It  documents  not  so  much  the 
history  of  the  revelation  as  the  revelation  in  the  history, 
a  certain  construction  of  the  purpose  and  meaning  of  the 
divine  coming  and  the  divine  action.  If  this  apostolic 
view  of  things  be  without  inspiration,  then  about  Christ 
and  his  meaning  we  must  simply  guess  according  to  our 
needs  and  sympathies.  But  if  it  be  authoritative  any- 
where it  is  on  the  place,  person,  and  work  of  Christ,  and 
not  merely  on  the  facts,  sequences,  or  pragmatisms  of 
his  biography.  In  its  substance  it  is  a  part  of  the 
revelation ;  its  penumbra ;  and  it  is  as  authoritative  in 
its  way  as  the  manifestation  whose  vibration  it  is.  It 
is  of  eternal  moment  to  the  soul  whether  it  take  or 
leave  the  Christ  that  this  book  as  a  whole  preaches  to 
the  world.  For  it  does  not  give  us  the  data  for  a 
Christ  but  Christ's  own  interpretation  of  himself. 

§         §         § 
From  all  this  what  follows  ?     It  follows  that  the  view  of 

Christ's  place  and  person  which  pervades  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  authoritative  for  us.  The  Christ  it  preaches  is 
the  Christ  God  sent.  The  depth,  directness,  sureness, 
and  uniqueness  of  the  inspiration  guarantee  the  reality 
and  deity  of  the  manifestation.  If  God  produces  a  special 
understanding  of  the  fact  he  must  have  produced  the  fact. 
If  apostles  so  moved  saw  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ 
such  significance,  then  the  fact  itself  is  not  at  the  mercy  of 
mere  historical  evidence.  The  act  of  faith  when  it  rises 
to  inspiration  gives  us  the  reality  of  its  object  in  giving  us 
its  power.  If  God  made  men  so  to  read  and  trust  the 
resurrection  power.  He  could  not  be  misleading  them  as 

to  the  creative  fact  it  streamed  from.     The  same  spirit 
o 


l82  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

effected    both.      If  inspired    knowledge   grow    out   of  a 
certain  fact  that  fact  is  a  part  of  God's  revelation.     We 
cannot  take  the  resurrection  gospel  and  leave  the  resur- 
rection fact.     So  also  with  the  cross ;    and  so  with  the 
person  of  Christ.     If  the  apostles  were  right  in  believing 
that  their  interpretation  of  the  central  things,  the  creative 
things — details  and  peripherals  do  not  concern  us — were 
given  them  from  the  Lord  : — if  it  was  Christ  who  taught 
them  to  believe  in  himself  as  the  Eternal  Son,  then  the 
fact  was  so.      He  was  the  Eternal  Son.     If  they  were 
right  about  the  source  of  their  knowledge  they  were  right 
about  the  object  of  it ;  these  were  one  and  the  same.     It 
is  a  great  "  if,"  I  admit.     If  they  were  wrong  about  their 
authority  and  their  centre,  the  outlying  pieties  of  such 
fanatics  have  little  moral  worth,  however  beautiful.  If  they 
were  wrong  there  they  were  of  little  value  anywhere  else, 
except  among  the  pieties  and  beauties  of  faith,  which, 
however,  do  not  need  apostles  to  their  warrant,  but  appeal 
directly  enough  to  our  spiritual  aesthetic.     Only  they  do 
not  lift  us  above  an  aesthetic  religion.     Divine  love,  were 
it  certain,  is  easily  believed  to  be  all  that  it  sounds  in  the 
love-song  of  the  Christian  Church,  in  i   Cor.  xiii.     The 
question  is,  is  it  certain  ?      Was  and  is  Jesus  Christ  that 
love  for  good  and  all  ?     And  is  there  anything  that  can 
separate  us  from  that  love  of  Christ's  ?     Could  angels  or 
powers  or  things  to  come  from  new  heights  or  depths  ? 
Could  a  later  revelation  come,  and  a  more  complete,  to 
detach  us  from  it,  and  to  release  us  from  its  obsession  for 
some  revelation  still  more  divine  and  more  nearly  final  ? 

§         §         § 
A  certain  nobleman  possessed  a  house  in  a  fine  park  ; 
and  he  owned  also  a  great  picture  of  his  late  countess, 
painted  by  a  classic  artist  in  the  days  when  her  beauty 


VI.]  The  Testimony  of  Apostolic  Inspiration  183 

was  the  talk  of  the  town.  He  was  so  proud  of  it  that  he 
had  it  placed  on  an  easel  near  a  large  oriel  window  on 
the  ground  floor,  so  that  not  only  his  guests  within  but 
the  public  who  were  allowed  to  stroll  round  the  house  in 
the  absence  of  the  family  might  see  it.  Now  a  certain 
stranger  was  staying  at  the  hotel  in  the  village  by  the 
park  gate  while  the  family  was  at  home  and  the  domain 
was  closed  ;  who  spent  much  of  his  time  in  rambling 
about  the  neighbourhood,  and  sketching  many  of  its  fine 
points.  Of  course  he  turned  his  glass  often  upon  the 
mansion  with  a  curious  eye ;  and  one  day  he  fixed  it  upon 
the  window  with  the  picture.  He  was  much  arrested  and 
impressed  with  the  lady  he  saw  there,  and  could  not 
banish  her  from  his  mind.  Day  after  day  he  stalked  the 
window  with  his  lens;  and,  though  the  time  of  the  day 
and  the  falling  of  the  lights  did  not  always  enable  him  to 
see  her,  yet  he  did  see  her  so  often  that,  being  a  highly 
romantic  young  artist,  he  fell  deeply  in  love  with  her,  and 
neglected  his  sketching  to  haunt  the  most  commanding 
point  at  the  hour  when  he  mostly  saw  her  sit  and 
meditate  there.  At  last  the  family  went  to  town  and  he 
had  access  to  the  grounds — only  to  discover  that  he  had 
been  fooling  himself;  that  his  love  was  silly,  and  it  could 
never  be  answered  even  were  all  the  obstacles  he  had 
thought  of  removed.  For  she  was  a  work  of  genius  but 
she  had  no  life.  Her  beauty  was  great  but  she  had  no 
heart.  She  could  neither  love,  nor  scorn,  nor  help,  nor 
speak. 

If  the  supernatural  figure  of  Christ  that  we  see  set  out 
in  the  New  Testament  is  not  real  it  is  but  a  picture  at 
the  great  window  to  fool  poor  men.  With  all  its  beauty 
and  spell  it  is  no  more  to  keen  and  hungry  souls  than  the 
magic  canvas  to  the  dreaming  youth.    A  far  plainer  reality 


184         The  Person  and  Place  0/  Jesns  Christ        [lect.  vi. 

would  better  have  met  his  heart.  A  real  prophet  would 
mean  far  more  to  us  than  any  Christ  if  the  Christ  were 
but  an  apostolic  phantasy.  The  apostolic  family  might 
surround  their  picture  with  all  pious  care,  admiration,  and 
observance.  They  might  set  it  full  in  the  window, 
rhapsodise  about  its  beauty,  and  about  the  way  they  felt  it. 
But  it  is  not  the  mistress  of  the  house.  And  it  cannot  do 
or  be  for  any  the  thing  they  need  most  of  all.  It  can 
mock  them  by  its  very  unearthly  beauty  but  it  cannot 
love  their  love  back.  It  is  a  world's  wonder  of  a  picture, 
but  it  is  only  painted  on  the  window ;  and  it  cannot  open 
the  door  of  its  own  house  to  any  either  to  come  or  to  go. 


LECTURE    VII 

THE    TESTIMONY   OF    EXPERIENCE   IN    THE 
SOUL    AND    IN    THE    CHURCH 


LECTURE    VII 

THE    TESTIMONY   OF    EXPERIENCE    IN    THE    SOUL 
AND    IN    THE    CHURCH 


Our  present  Protestantism  is  historically  composed 
from  the  union  of  two  streams,  which  take  their  rise  in 
two  different  sources.  They  still  flow  alongside  with  a 
fusion  so  far  very  incomplete  ;  and  they  react  on  each 
other  with  an  amount  of  irritation  somewhat  inexplicable 
till  we  perceive  that  the  streams  are  two,  distinct  in  their 
origin  and  direction.  They  are  the  Reformation  and 
the  Illumination  :  the  Reformation  from  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  the  diversified  movement  which  marked  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  which  is  compendiously  known 
as  the  Illumination  or  the  Aufklarung.*  They  are  the 
old  Protestantism  and  the  new — the  one  resting  on  the 
objectivity  of  a  given  revelation,  the  other  on  the  sub- 
jectivity of  human  nature  or  thought ;  the  one  finding 
its    standard  in  a  divine  intervention,  the  other  in  im- 

*  For  a  full  account  of  the  situation  we  should  really  have  to  recognise 
three  streams.  We  should  have  to  distinguish  within  Protestantism  the 
old  objective  tendency,  resting  on  history  as  the  authoritative  source 
(in  the  Bible),  and  the  newer  subjective  tendency,  resting  on  Christian 
experience,  originating  in  Anabaptism,  revisel  in  Pietism,  and  rewritten 
in  Schleiermacher.  The  one  represents  classic  Protestantism,  the  other 
romantic.  I5ut  ff>r  the  present  purpose  it  will  be  liettcr  to  confine  our 
attention  mainly  to  the  two  currents  named  in  the  text.  Of  course,  the 
subjectivity  of  human  nature,  which  I  mention  immediately,  becomes  in 
Pietism  the  subjectivity  of  Christianised  human  nature. 

tS7 


1 88  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

manent  human  reason  more  or  less  generously  con- 
strued ;  the  one  emphasising  a  divine  redemption,  the 
other  human  goodness  and  its  substantial  sufficiency. 
The  face  of  the  one  movement  is  towards  the  Church 
and  the  Bible,  the  face  of  the  other  is  towards  civilisa- 
tion and  culture.  The  one  falls  back  upon  historic 
humanity,  upon  the  history  and  the  revelation  there; 
the  other  on  intrinsic  humanity  and  the  revelation  there. 
It  is  a  distinction  much  more  penetrating  than  the 
somewhat  vulgar  antithesis  of  Orthodoxy  and  Hetero- 
doxy. It  is  not  so  much  two  theologies  as  two  methods 
— if  not  two  religions.  And  neither  is  pure.  The  one, 
the  Reformation  stream,  carries  down  with  it  much  of 
the  d6bris  of  mediaeval  doctrine  ;  because  at  its  source, 
in  the  monk  Luther,  it  was  mainly  a  religious  and 
ethical  change  rather  than  a  theological.  The  other,  the 
Illumination,  carries  with  it  much  of  the  pagan  debris 
of  the  older  Renaissance  and  of  classic  antiquity ;  since 
its  element  was  not  so  much  religion  as  thought,  and  its 
achievement  is  not  faith  but  culture,  and  especially 
science.  It  was  really  directed  at  first  not  against 
religion,  but  against  what  it  thought  a  false  basis  of 
religion.  It  sought  to  replace  imagination  by  induc- 
tion as  the  foundation  of  our  conception  of  the  world. 
It  asserted  the  intrinsic  divinity  of  nature,  and  it  would 
make  the  spiritual  life  but  the  highest  of  natural 
phenomena.  While,  therefore,  the  direct  legacy  of  the 
Reformation  laid  fundamental  stress  upon  the  sense  of 
guilt,  and  the  action  of  grace,  the  legacy  of  the  Illumi- 
nation laid  stress  on  native  goodness,  the  sense  of  rational 
sympathy,  and  the  sufficiency  of  human  love  spiritualised. 
For  the  one,  man  was  the  lost  thing  in  the  universe,  and 
the  greatness  of  his  ruin  was  the  index  of  the  dignity  of 


vii.J         The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  189 

his  nature;  for  the  other,  man  was  the  one  saving  thing 
in  the  universe  ;  and  the  greatness  of  his  success  in  sub- 
duing the  world  to  his  thought  and  will  was  the  badge 
of  his  heroic  divinity,  soiled,  perhaps,  but  indelible.     The 
one  lived  by  redemption  and  regeneration,  the  other  by 
evolution  and  education.     For  the  one  forgiveness  was 
essential,  and  it  was  identical  with  the  new  eternal  life; 
it  put  life  on  a  quite  new  track,  it  was  a  redemption,  a 
revolution.     For    the  other   forgiveness   was   incidental, 
and    simply   removed    obstacles   or   redressed    lapses  in 
man's   developing  career  ;  it  put  the   train    on    the   old 
track,  after  some  derailment  by  accident,  or  some  loop- 
line  by  error.     It  was  a  restoration.     The  one  cultivated 
theology  and  sanctity,  the  other  science  and  sentiment, 
criticism  and  romance.     The  one  saw  the  new  Jerusalem 
descending  out  of  heaven  from  God,  the  other  saw  it  rise 
"  like  an  exhalation  "  from  earth.    The  heaven  of  the  one 
was  in  the  blue  sky,  for  the  other  it  was  in  the  growing 
grass.    For  the  one  the  great  matter  was  God's  transcen- 
dence over  the  world,  for  the  other  it  was  His  immanence 
in  it.     So  the  one  degenerated  to  Deism,  the  other  to 
Pantheism.      For    the    one    the  Incarnation  is  nothing 
but  miracle,  inexplicable  but  sure;    for  the    other  it    is 
nothing  but  universal  immanence.     For  the  one  redemp- 
tion is  an  interference,  for  the  other  it  is  an  evolution. 
For    the    one  Christ  is   absolute,  for  the  other    He    is 
but  relative    to  the  history  from  which  He  arose.     For 
the   one    He    closes    the   old  series    totally    in    the   new 
creation  of  another,  for  the  other  He  but  mightily  pro- 
longs it.     In  the  one  case  we  believe  in  Christ,  in  the 
other  we  believe  like  Christ.     For  the  one  Christ  is  the 
object  of   our  faith,  for  the  other  he  is    the  captain  of 
our  faith,  its  greatest  instance.     In  the  one  we  trust  our 


igo  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

whole  selves  to  Christ  for  ever,  in  the  other  we  imitate 
him.  In  the  one  he  is  our  God,  in  the  other  our 
brother.  It  is  well  that  the  issue  should  be  clear,  if 
our  choice  is  to  be  as  intelligent  and  effectual  as  a  faith 
should  be. 

These  are  the  two  streams  whose  junction  forms 
current  Protestantism,  and  can  you  wonder  that  the 
situation  is  complicated  and  even  confused  ?  We  should 
trivialise  the  whole  subject  if  we  saw  in  the  serious 
religious  differences  of  the  day  no  more  than  orthodoxy 
and  heterodoxy — the  propriety  of  certain  individuals  on 
the  one  hand,  faced  by  the  perversity  of  certain  others 
on  the  other.  The  conflicting  views  of  Messrs.  X  and  Y 
are  but  the  points  where  old  opposing  forces  for  the 
moment  emerge  and  meet. 

And  we  must  own  each  movement  has  its  relative  justifi- 
cation.    The  old  Protestantism  had  come  to  have  great 
need    of  the  Illumination.     It  was   growing   cumbrous, 
hard,  and  shallow.     It  needed  especially  to  be  trimmed 
down   and    cleared   up    from   the   critical    side    of    the 
Illumination,  and  to  be  deepened  and  humanised  from 
its  romantic  side.     In  just  the  same  way  medisevalism 
had  called  for  the  Renaissance.     But  all  the  same  it  was 
not  the  Renaissance  that  really  took  Europe  in  hand  at 
that  crisis.     It  was  no  Paganism  that  could  save  Europe 
for   the   true   Church,    or   the  Church  for  Christianity. 
That    was    done     by    the    self-recuperative    power     of 
Christianity  itself.     It  was  done  by  the  self-reformation 
of  the  Church,  by  the  restoration  of  faith,  and  not  the 
renascence  of  culture.     Remember,  the  Reformation  was 
not  something  done  to  the  Church,  but  by  it,  and  therefore 
by  its  faith.    It  was  the  vital  Element  in  the  Church  dis- 
engaging and  asserting  itself.  And  so  to-day  it  is  not  to  the 


VII.]         The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  191 

Illumination,  it  is  not  to  any  culture,  theological,  aesthetic, 
or  scientific,  that  we  are  to  look  for  our  salvation  from 
the  Protestant  scholasticism  which  choked  faith  by 
orthodoxy  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  still  survives 
in  the  popular  levels.  That  deliverance  can  only  come 
by  a  movement  from  the  interior  of  faith  itself.  I  know 
it  would  be  untrue  to  say  that  all  the  liberalising  influence 
in  the  Protestantism  of  to-day  is  due  to  the  direct  action 
of  the  Reformation  spirit  of  faith  or  religion.  In  so  far 
as  that  liberality  is  a  correction  of  our  views  about  God 
in  the  cosmos,  it  is  due  quite  as  much,  if  not  more,  to 
the  Illumination,  which  was  quite  independent  of  the 
reformers  and  rose  rather  from  the  philosophers.  But 
the  real  matter  is  not  the  correction  of  views  but  the 
correction  of  real  religion,  of  practical  relations  between 
God  and  the  soul.  And  that  is  due,  not  to  the  action 
of  either  reason  or  romance,  but  to  the  renovation  of  faith 
by  the  piety  and  genius  of  men  like  Spener,  Francke, 
Schleiermacher,  and  Wesley.  * 

§  §  § 
It  is  not  here  a  question  whether  each  tendency  must 
ban  the  other,  for  we  need  both ;  but  it  is  a  question 
which  of  them  must  be  dominant  for  Christianity,  and 
especially  for  original,  essential  Christianity.  I  mean  for 
Christianity  as  first  preached,  the  Christianity  of  the 
Bible  and  the  apostle.  In  proportion  as  it  ceases  to  be  a 
K-qpvyim,  Christianity  ceases  to  be  Christianity,  whether  it 
die  in  the  direction  of  a  sacramentalism  or  a  humanism. 
It  seems  to  me  that  this  is  constantly  overlooked  by  the 
spokesmen  of  a  Christianity  which  is  liberal  or  nothing. 
They  become  as  much  the  doctrinaire  victims  of  a  specu- 

*  I  do  not  forget  the  influence  of  the  romantic  movement  on  Schleier- 
macher, but  it  was  perhaps  upon  his  weaker  and  less  permanent  side. 


192  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

lative  theology  as  our  forefathers  were  the  victims  of  an 
orthodox  theology.  The  experimental  Gospel  in  each 
case  ceases  to  be  life,  and  evaporates  to  a  caput  mortuum 
of  certain  views  broad  or  narrow.  I  read  a  criticism  of  a 
positive  theologian  by  a  liberal  of  the  academic  stamp  in 
which  occurred  this  naive  saying:  "It  looks  as  if  the 
problems  of  theology  were  here  confused  with  the 
practical  declaration  of  the  Gospel  by  preacher  or 
pastor."  There  is  not  one  of  the  apostles  that  would  not 
be  hit  by  the  remark.  And  it  applies  with  even  more 
force  to  our  Lord  Himself.  Where  are  we  to  go  for  our 
Christian  theology  except  to  their  practical  declaration  of 
the  Gospel?  The  New  Testament  is  no  collection  of 
theological  loci.  And  how  are  we  to  test  a  theology  at 
last  but  by  its  service  for  the  purposes  of  the  Gospel  ? 
Of  course,  if  it  is  not  a  theology  we  are  after  but  a 
theosophy,  if  our  interest  is  in  the  philosophy  or  psy- 
chology of  religion  as  a  product  of  the  human  spirit,  the 
case  is  altered.  But  with  that  the  Gospel  and  the 
preacher  have  little  directly  to  do.  It  is  very  interesting, 
but  it  is  not  vital.  It  belongs  to  the  Schools,  to  the 
interpretive  efforts  of  man  upon  the  world  ;  it  has  little  to 
do  with  the  Church  and  its  interpretive  message  of  man's 
destiny,  and  its  Gospel  of  God's  reality  in  His  redemptive 
work. 

When  the  question  is  forced,  therefore,  whether  the 
positive  or  the  liberal  movement  must  rule  in  a  historic 
Gospel,  we  have  no  hesitation  about  our  choice.  We 
take  the  Reformation  side  of  our  Protestantism  for  a 
stand,  and  not  the  Illuminationist.  We  may  even  go  so 
far,  when  the  issue  is  forced,  as  to  say  that  Illumi- 
nationism  or  Rationalism  is  not  Protestantism.  We  find 
our  charter  in  history,  and  not  in  human  nature ;  in  the 


VII.]         The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  193 

Word,  and  not  the  world.  The  seat  of  revelation  is  in 
the  cross,  and  not  in  the  heart.  The  precious  thing  is 
something  given,  and  not  evolved.  Our  best  goodness  is 
presented  to  us  rather  than  achieved  by  us.  The  King- 
dom of  God  is  not  a  final  goal,  but  an  initial  boon.  You 
will  say,  perhaps,  the  one  does  not  exclude  the  other. 
But  for  the  practical  issue  on  which  all  turns  (except  to  a 
doctrinaire  intellectualism),  for  the  last  reality,  it  is  more 
true  at  this  juncture  to  press  the  antithesis  than  to  slur 
it.  The  Gospel  stands  with  the  predominance  of  inter- 
vention, and  it  falls  with  the  predominance  of  evolution. 
Grace  is  essentially  miraculous.  Christ  is  more  precious 
to  us  by  what  distinguishes  Him  from  us  than  by  what 
identifies  Him  with  us.  The  Gospel  turns  entirely  upon 
redemptive  forgiveness ;  and  if  evolution  explain  all,  there 
is  no  sin,  and  therefore  no  forgiveness.  The  Gospel  turns 
on  the  finality  of  Christ  ;  but  on  an  evolutionary  idea 
there  is  no  finality  except  at  the  close;  it  is  therefore 
inaccessible,  for  the  end  is  not  yet.  There  can  be  no 
finality  on  that  basis,  in  anyone  who  appeared  in  a  middle 
point  of  the  chain.  So  far,  therefore,  Christ  is  pro- 
visional and  tentative  till  a  greater  arise.  The  positive 
Gospel,  we  say,  is  the  dominant  thing  by  which  modern 
thought  must  be  gauged  and  its  permanence  tested.  We 
may  take  from  the  modern  mind  and  its  results  so  much 
only  as  is  compatible  with  a  real,  historic,  redeeming, 
final  Gospel.  That  Gospel  is  the  preamble,  and  the 
subsequent  clauses  that  contradict  it  must  go  out. 

We  shall  not  be  foolish  enough,  sectarian  enough,  to 
make  a  sweeping  condemnation  of  modern  thought  in 
advance.  For  one  thing,  it  is  very  hard  to  know  what  is 
meant  by  it.  Does  it  mean  the  mental  world  of  Kant,  and 
Goethe,  and  Browning,  or  of  Spencer,  Fiske,  and  James, 


194  T^he  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

or  of  Nietzsche,  Tolstoi  and  Ibsen  ?  Because  they  are  in 
many  respects  as  incompatible  with  each  other,  and 
hated  by  each  other,  as  they  are  opposed  to  evangelical 
Christianity.  And,  for  another  thing,  we  have  already 
accepted  many  of  the  results  of  modern  civilisation.  It 
has  thrust  back  the  frontier  of  the  Church,  and  given  a 
mandate  to  the  State  to  take  up  province  after  province 
which  the  Church  used  to  control,  in  art,  science,  phil- 
anthropy, education,  and  the  like.  Well,  we  largely 
agree.  We  accept  the  emancipation  of  these  from 
religious  dictation.  Church  discipline  gives  way  to  civic 
rights  and  police  protection.  The  number  of  public 
subjects  on  which  the  preacher  is  entitled  to  a  respectable 
opinion  grows  fewer,  while  at  the  same  time  there  are 
more  aspects  than  ever  of  his  own  subject  open  to  his 
study  and  demanding  his  official  attention.  We  accept 
the  modern  repudiation  of  an  external  authority  in  the 
forms  of  belief  and  uniformity  of  confession.  We  accept 
the  essential  inwardness  of  faith  even  when  we  press  its 
objective.  We  accept  the  modern  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual. We  accept  the  modern  passion  for  reality,  which 
owes  so  much  to  science.  We  accept  the  methods  of  the 
Higher  Criticism,  and  only  differ  as  to  its  results.  We 
accept  the  modern  primacy  of  the  moral,  and  the  modern 
view  of  a  positive  moral  destiny  for  the  world.  And  we 
repudiate  imagination,  whether  aesthetic  or  speculative, 
as  the  ruling  factor  in  the  religious  life.  We  have 
assigned  another  place  and  function  to  the  miraculous  in 
connection  with  faith.  We  accept  the  modern  place 
claimed  for  experience  in  connection  with  truth ;  we 
recognise  that  the  real  certainty  of  Christian  truth  canj' 
only  come  with  the  experience  of  personal  salvation. 
In  these  and  other  respects   we  have  already   accepted 


vii.j         The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  195 

much    which   would    have    scared    even   the   stout    re- 
formers. 

II 

I  would  single  out  for  particular  stress  the  place  now 
given  to  experience  in  religion  in  consequence  of  the 
Reformation  view  of  faith,  co-operating  with  the  inductive 
method  of  science — our  experience  of  Christ  especially. 
What  Nature  is  to  science,  that  is  Christ  to  positive 
faith.  I  would  direct  notice  to  the  form  of  the  great 
issue  presented  in  the  question  :  Are  we  to  believe  in 
Christ  or  like  Christ  ?  Are  we  to  trust  ourselves  to  Him, 
or  to  the  type  of  religion  He  represents  ? 

I  am  struck  with  the  absence  of  any  sign  of  an  experi- 
ence distinctively  Christian  in  many  of  those  who  discuss 
the  sanctuaries  of  the  Christian  faith — such  as  the  nature 
of  the  Cross,  or  of  the  self-consciousness  of  Christ.  To 
them  Christ's  first  relation  is  to  human  power,  or  love, 
and  not  to  sin.  They  cultivate  not  trust  in  Christ,  but  the 
"religion  of  Jesus."  We  are  driven  from  pillar  to  post, 
and  left  with  no  rest  for  the  sole  of  our  foot.  Can  we 
rest  on  the  Gospels  ?  No.  Criticism  will  not  allow  that. 
Can  we  on  the  Epistles  ?  No.  Protestantism  will  not 
allow  that.  It  would  be  taking  the  external  authority  of 
an  apostle  for  our  base,  and  that  ends  in  Rome.  But  is 
there  no  such  thing  any  more  as  the  testimonium  Sancti 
Spiritus  ?  No.  Some  of  these  scholars,  to  judge  from  their 
writings  alone,  do  not  seem  even  so  much  as  to  have 
heard  of  a  Holy  Ghost.  And  they  have  a  fatal  dread  of 
pietism,  and  methodism,  and  most  forms  of  intensely  per- 
sonal evangelical  faith.  They  are,  like  Haeckel,  in  their 
own  way,  the  victims  of  an  intellectualism  which  means 
spiritual  atrophy  to  Christianity  at  last.     No,  they  say. 


ig6  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  lect. 

if  you  fall  back  on  your  experience,  you  may  land  any- 
where. 

But  am  I  really  forbidden  to  make  any  use  of  my 
personal  experience  of  Christ  for  the  purposes  even  of 
scientific  theology  ?  Should  it  make  no  difference  to  the 
evidence  for  Christ's  resurrection  that  I  have  had  personal 
dealings  with  the  risen  Christ  as  my  Saviour,  nearer  and 
dearer  than  my  own  flesh  and  blood  ?  Is  His  personal 
gift  of  forgiveness  to  me,  in  the  central  experience  of  my 
life,  of  no  value  in  settling  the  objective  value  of  His 
cross  and  person  ?  My  personal  contact  with  Christ,  our 
commerce  together,  may  I  found  nothing  on  these  ? 
"No,"  it  is  said,  "nothing  of  scientific  objective  value. 
These  experiences  may  be  of  great  personal  value  to  you, 
but  they  give  you  no  warrant  for  stepping  outside  your 
own  feelings.  They  may  be  useful  illusions  in  their 
place,  but  you  must  outgrow  them.  You  can  never  be 
quite  sure  that  the  Saviour  you  meet  is  a  personal  reality. 
You  can  never  make  it  certain  to  any  that  He  is  a  con- 
tinuous personality  with  the  historic  Jesus.  And  it  is  even 
laid  upon  us  to  make  it  doubtful  for  yourself."  "  In  your 
so-called  communion  with  Christ  you  have  no  more  real 
right,"  we  are  told,  "  to  build  on  the  objective  personal 
reality  of  your  vis-d-vis  than  the  Roman  Catholic  girl  had 
to  believe  in  the  real  presence  and  speech  of  the  Virgin 
at  Lourdes.  If  it  is  Christ  who  visits  you,  it  was  the 
Virgin  that  visited  her.  Of  so  little  worth  is  the  fact  of 
the  experience  in  vouching  for  the  content  of  experience. 
If  you  commune  with  Christ,  do  not  gird  at  those  who 
traffic  with  the  saints." 

§         §         § 
Now,  might  I  have  leave  to  say  that  I  had  to  meet  that 
problem  for  myself  several  years  ago  ?     And  the  answer 


vii.J  The  Testimony  of  Experietice  in  the  Soul  197 

I  thought  satisfactory  was  twofold.  First,  it  was  personal ; 
second,  it  was  historical  in  two  ways. 

\\  I  take  the  first  first.  There  is,  and  can  be,  nothing  so 
certain  to  me  as  that  which  is  involved  in  the  most 
crucial  and  classic  experience  of  my  moral  self,  my  con- 
science, my  real,  surest  me.  A  vision  might  be  a  phantom, 
and  a  colloquy  an  hallucination.  But  if  I  am  not  to  be 
an  absolute  Pyrrhonist,  doubt  everything,  and  renounce 
my  own  reality,  I  must  find  my  practical  certainty  in  that 
which  founds  my  moral  life,  and  especially  my  new  moral 
life.  The  test  of  all  philosophy  is  ethical  conviction. 
That  is  where  we  touch  reality — in  moral  action  (God  as 
Spirit  is  God  in  adit),  and  especially  in  that  action  of  the 
moral  nature  which  renews  it  in  Christ.  Now,  my  con- 
tention is  that  my  contact  with  Christ  is  not  merely 
visionary,  it  is  moral,  personal  and  mutual.  -  Nor  is  it 
merely  personal,  in  the  same  sense  in  which  I  might  have 
personal  intercourse  from  time  to  time  with  a  man  in 
whom  I  am  little  concerned  between  whiles.  Because 
what  I  have  in  Christ  is  not  an  impression,  but  a  life 
change  ;  not  an  impression  of  personal  influence,  which 
might  evaporate,  but  a  faith  of  central  personal  change. 
I  do  not  merely  feel  changes ;  I  am  changed.  Another 
becomes  my  moral  life.  He  has  done  more  than  deeply 
influence  me.  He  has  possessed  me.  I  am  not  his  loyal 
subject,  but  his  absolute  property.  I  have  rights  against 
King  Edward,  however  loyal  I  am,  but  against  Christ  I 
have  none.  He  has  not  merely  passed  into  my  life  as 
even  a  wife  might  do,  but  he  has  given  me  a  new  life, 
a  new  moral  self,  a  new  consciousness  of  moral  reality. 
In  him  alone  I  have  forgiveness,  reconciliation,  the  grace 
of  God,  and  therefore  the  very  God,  (since  neither  love 
nor  grace  is  a  mere  attribute  of  God).     There  has  been 


igS  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

what  I  can  only  call  a  new  creation,  using  the  strongest 

word  in  my  reach.     I  owe  him  my  total  self.     He  has 

not  merely  healed  me,  in  passing,  of  an  old  trouble,  but 

He  has  given  me  eternal  life.     He  has  not  only  impressed 

me  as  a  vision  might — even  one  projected  from  my  own 

interior — but  he  has  done  a  permanent  work  on  me  at 

my  moral  centre.     He  has  made  a  moral  change  in  me 

which,  for  years  and  years,  has  worked  outwards  from 

the  very  core  of  my  moral  self,  and  subdued  everything 

else  to  its  obedience.     In  my  inmost  experience,  tested 

by   years   of  life,  he   has  brought  me  God.      It   is   not 

merely  that  he  spoke  to  me  of  God  or  God's  doings,  but 

in  Him  God  directly  spoke  to  me ;  and  more,  he  did  in 

me,  and  for  me,  the  thing  that  only  God's  real  presence 

could  do.     Who  can  forgive  sin   but  God  only,  against 

whom  it  was  done  ? 

Thus  the  real  Catholic  analogy  to  his  action  on  me 
and  in  me  is  not  visions  of  the  Virgin,  or  the  ecstacies 
of  saints,  but  it  is  the  Sacraments.  In  the  Catholic  view 
these  are  objective  and  effective  upon  the  inmost  substan- 
tial self;  so  is  Christ  objective,  effective,  creative,  upon 
my  moral,  my  real  self,  upon  me  as  a  conscience,  on 
sinful  me.  He  is  the  author  not  of  my  piety  merely  but 
of  my  regeneration.  My  experience  of  him  is  that  of 
one  who  does  a  vital,  revolutionary  work  in  that  moral 
region  where  the  last  certainty  lies.  And  in  that  region 
it  is  an  experience  of  a  change  so  total  that  I  could  not 
bring  it  to  pass  by  any  resource  of  my  own.  Nor  could 
any  man  effect  it  in  me.  And  any  faith  I  have  at  all  is 
faith  in  Christ  not  merely  as  its  content  nor  merely  as 
its  point  of  origin,  but  as  its  creator.  The  Christ  I 
believe  in  I  believe  in  as  the  creator  of  the  belief,  and 
not  merely  its  object.      I  know  him  as  the  author  as  well 


VII.]  The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  igg 

as  object  of  my  faith  in  God.  I  know  him,  therefore, 
as  God.  The  great  change  was  not  a  somersault  I 
succeeded  in  turning,  with  some  divine  help ;  it  was  a 
revolution  effected  in  me  and  by  him,  comparable  only 
to  my  entry  on  the  world.  The  very  fact  that  in  its 
nature  it  was  forgiveness  and  regeneration  makes  it  a 
moral  certainty,  the  kind  of  certainty  that  rises  from 
contact  with  my  Judge,  with  the  last  moral  and  personal 
reality,  who  has  power  even  to  break  me,  and  with  my 
Redeemer,  who  has  power  to  remake  me  as  his  own. 

§         §         § 

If  certainty  do  not  lie  there,  where  can  it  be  found  in 
life  ?  If  he  is  not  real,  moral  reality  has  no  meaning. 
There  are  hallucinations  in  religious  experience,  but  not 
here.  They  might  be  connected  with  the  affections  but 
not  with  the  conscience  at  its  one  life  crisis.  They  might 
be  as  impressive  as  a  revenant,  but  no  more  morally  creative 
and  redemptive.  If  you  claim  the  right  to  challenge  th6 
validity  of  my  experience,  you  must  do  it  on  the  ground 
of  some  experience  surer,  deeper,  getting  nearer  moral 
reality  than  mine.  What  is  it  ?  Does  the  last  criterion 
lie  in  sense,  or  even  in  thought  ?  Is  it  not  in  conscience  ? 
If  life  at  its  centre  is  moral,  then  the  supreme  certainty 
lies  there.  It  must  be  associated,  not  with  a  feeling  nor 
with  a  philosophic  process,  but  with  the  last  moral  experi- 
ence of  life,  which  we  find  to  be  a  life  morally  changed 
from  the  centre  and  for  ever.  To  challenge  that  means 
rationalism,  intellectualism,  and  the  merest  theosophy. 
Do  not  forget  that  philosophy  is  but  a  method,  while 
faith,  which  is  at  the  root  of  theology,  presents  us  with 
a  new  datum,  a  new  reality. 

You  refuse  the  mere  dictum  of  an  apostle.  But  if  we 
may  not  rest  upon  the  mere  dictum  of  an  apostle,  may 


200  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lbct. 

we  not  upon  our  own  repetition  of  the  apostolic  experi- 
ence, of  the  experience  which  made  them  apostles  ?  I  say 
repetition,  but  might  I  not  say  prolongation  ?  We  rest 
on  our  own  participation  in  the  ageless  action  of  the 
same  redemption  in  the  Cross  as  changed  them,  after 
many  waverings,  for  good  and  all.  Is  it  not  the  same 
act,  the  same  spirit,  the  same  real  personality  acting  on 
us  both,  in  the  same  moral  world  ?  And,  expanding  my 
own  experience  by  the  aid  of  theirs,  may  I  not  say  this : 
I  am  not  saved  by  the  apostle  or  his  experience,  nor  by 
the  Church  and  its  experience,  but  by  what  saved  the 
apostle  and  the  Church.  When  Christ  did  for  me  what 
I  have  described,  was  it  not  the  standing  crisis  of  the 
moral  macrocosm  acting  in  its  triumphant  way  at  the 
centre  of  my  microcosm  ?  Was  not  the  moral  crisis  of 
the  race's  destiny  on  Christ's  cross  more  than  echoed, 
was  it  not  in  some  sense  re-enacted  at  my  moral  centre, 
and  the  great  conquest  reachieved  on  the  outpost  scale 
of  my  single  crisis?  The  experience  has  not  only  a 
moral  nature,  as  a  phase  of  conscience,  but  an  objective 
moral  content ;  as  is  shown  by  the  absolute  rest  and 
decisive  finality  of  its  moral  effect  in  my  life  and  conduct. 
If  it  be  not  so,  then  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  men 
can  produce  in  themselves  these  changes  which  perma- 
nently break  the  self  in  two,  or  can  lift  themselves  to 
eternal  moral  heights  by  their  own  waistband.  But,  if 
so,  what  need  is  there  for  a  God  at  all  ?  Do  not  even 
the  positivists  likewise  ? 

There  is  no  rational  certainty  by  which  this  moral  cer- 
tainty of  a  creator  Christ  could  be  challenged  ;  for  there 
is  no  rational  certainty  more  sure,  or  so  sure,  and  none 
that  goes  where  this  goes,  to  the  self-disposing  centres 
of  life.    This  moral  certainty  is  the  truly  rational  certainty. 


VII.]  The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  201 

Christ  approves  Himself  as  a  divine  reality  by  His  revo- 
lutionary, causal,  creative  action  on  that  inmost  reality 
whereby  man  is  man.  That  centre  from  which  I  act 
(and  therefore  am  real),  meets,  in  a  way  decisive  for  all 
life,  with  Christ  in  His  act  on  the  Cross.  If  this  contact 
represent  no  real  formative  activity  on  me,  if  it  be  but 
impressionist  influence,  then  the  whole  and  central  activity 
of  my  life,  whereby  I  confront  it  in  kind,  is  unreal.  If 
the  Saviour  be  unreal  and  my  communion  an  unreality,  a 
mere  mystic  or  moody  mingling  of  being,  then  there  is 
no  reality,  and  everything  is  dissolved  into  cloud  and 
darkness  and  vapour  of  smoke. 

§         §         § 
I   do  not  wish  to  say  anything  disrespectful  of  these 

academic  critics  to  whom  we  owe  so  very  much  in  the 
way  of  laboratory  theology,  but  they  are  the  second,  not 
the  first.  A  higher  hand  must  make  them  mild.  A  deeper 
insight  must  enlarge  their  truth.  And  I  much  wish  they 
had  more  of  that  ethical  realism  of  Carlyle  or  Ibsen,  only 
turning  it  upon  the  conscience  at  the  Cross.  But  so 
often  (just  as  a  vast  memory  may  impair  the  power  of 
judgment)  you  find  the  finest  critical  faculty,  and  the  most 
powerful  scholarly  apparatus,  conjoined  with  a  moral 
nature  singularly  naive,  and  beautifully  simple  and  unequal 
to  the  actual  world.  Their  experience  of  life  and  con- 
science has  no  record  of  lapse  or  shame.  Their  world 
is  a  study  of  still-life  ;  it  has  not  the  drama,  the  fury,  the 
pang,  the  tragedy,  the  crisis  of  the  actual  world  at  large, 
with  its  horrible  guilt  and  its  terror  of  judgment.  It 
opens  to  them  none  of  the  crevasses  where  glow  the 
nether  fires.  They  inhabit,  morally,  the  West  End. 
They  are  in  no  touch  with  damned  souls.  They  have 
lived  in  an  unworldly  purity,  and  have  never  been  drawn 


202  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

from  the  jaws  of  hell,  or  taken  from  the  fearful  pit  and 
its  miry  clay.  They  have  been  reared,  many  of  them,  in 
the  sacred  and  pious  atmosphere  of  the  German  manse, 
and  cradled  in  the  godliness  of  the  most  Christian  of 
homes.  The  paradox  is  this,  that  if  purity  be  the  test 
of  truth,  and  obedience  the  organ  of  theological  know- 
ledge, if  that  be  the  meaning  of  "will  do,  shall  know" 
(as  it  is  not),  if  they  are  as  right  in  their  views  as  they 
are  of  heart,  then  evangelical  Christianity  would  be  dying 
of  its  own  moral  success. 

Ill 

The  second  part  of  my  answer  to  the  suggested  analogy 
between  communion  with  a  saint  and  communion  with 
Christ  our  Lord  is  this.  It  would  enlarge  what  I  have 
been  saying  to  the  scale  of  history.  Christ  has  entered 
actual  history,  with  piercing,  crucial,  moral  effect,  in  a 
way  the  Virgin  never  has,  nor  any  saint.  He  has  entered 
it  not  only  profoundly,  but  centrally  and  creatively ;  she 
is  adjutorial  at  most.  By  his  effect  upon  human  ex- 
perience he  created  that  Church  within  which  the 
worship  and  contact  of  the  Saints  arose.  The  Church 
arose  as  a  product  of  something  which  Christ  produced — 
namely,  saving  faith.  And  it  is  not  only  the  effect  of 
Christ  on  the  Church  that  I  speak  of,  but,  through  the 
Church,  his  effect  on  history  at  large.  Christ  affects 
the  moral  springs  of  history  as  no  saint  has  done.  They 
but  colour  or  turn  the  stream ;  he  struck  from  the  rock. 
I  make  all  allowance  for  the  fact  that,  by  the  Church's 
fault,  he  has  affected  history  less  than  he  might  have 
done.  But  it  remains  true  that  all  we  have  and  hope  in 
the  new  humanity  owes  to  Christ  what  it  owes  to  no 
other.     And  it  owes  it  to  a  Christ  felt  and  believed  to  be 


VII.]  The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  203 

generically  different  from  every  rival  or  every  believer. 
What  we  owe  to  Christendom,  or  to  great  Christians, 
they  owe  to  a  Christ  who  owed  himself  to  no  man.  He~ 
has  entered  the  history  of  the  Church  at  least  as  He  has 
entered  my  history — not  as  the  mere  postulate,  nor  even 
as  the  spring,  but  as  the  Creator  of  the  new  life,  the  new 
self,  while  he  himself  needed  no  new  self  or  new  life.  I 
make  all  allowance  for  the  reasonable  results  of  historic 
criticism,  yet  he  stands  in  history  as  a  defined  conscious- 
ness and  a  creative  person,  who  is  powerful  not  in  the 
degree  in  which  he  is  appreciated  by  our  experience,  but 
in  a  way  which  creates  experience,  and  which  can  only 
be  appreciated  by  something  greater  than  our  experience 
— by  our  faith.  "^Ve  know  him  by  faith  to  be  much  more 
than  he  has  ever  been  to  our  experience.  I  know  him, 
and  the  Church  knows  Him,  as  a  person  of  infinite  power 
to  create  fresh  experience  of  himself,  which  is  experience 
of  God.  My  contact  with  him  by  faith  is  continually 
deepening  my  experience  of  him.  And  as  my  experience 
deepens  it  brings  home  a  Christ  objective  in  history,  and 
creative  of  the  experience,  and  the  life,  and  the  deeds  of 
a  whole  vast  Church,  meant,  and  moving,  to  subdue  man- 
kind not  to  itself,  but  to  the  faith  of  the  Gospel. 

§  §  § 
But  how  can  an  individual  experience  give  an  absolute 
truth  ?  How  can  an  experience  (which  is  a  thing  per- 
sonal to  me  in,  say,  my  own  forgiveness)  assure  me  of 
the  world  ?  How  can  my  experience,  my  forgiveness, 
assure  me  of  the  world's  redemption  ?  How  can  it  assure 
me  of  the  final  and  absolute  establishment  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  ?  I  may  experience  my  salvation,  but  how  can  I 
experience  the  salvation  of  the  world — which  is  for  all 
(and  is  so  felt  by  some)  a  greater  concern  than  their  own  ? 


204  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

The  answer  is  this.     My  experienced  salvation  is  not  a 
passing  impression  but  a  life  faith.     It  is  not  a  subjective 
frame   but  an  objective  relation,   and  even  transaction. 
The  peace  of  God  is  not  glassy  calm  but  mighty  con- 
fidence.    My  experience  here  is  the  consciousness  not  of 
an  impression  on  me,  but  of  an  act  in  me,  on  me,  and  by 
me.     It  is  not  an  afferent  but  an  efferent  consciousness, 
as  the  psychologists  would  say,  like  the  muscular  sense, 
the  sense  not  of  rheumatism  but  of  energy.     And,  to  go 
on,  it  is  the  sense  not  only  of  myself  as  acting  in  the 
experience  called  faith,  but  it  is  the  sense  that  that  act  is 
not  perfectly  spontaneous  but  evoked,  nay,  created  by  its 
content  and  object.     And,  still  to  go  on,  it  is  the  sense 
that  it  is  created  by  another  and  parent  act — which  is  the 
one  eternal  decisive  act  of  an  eternal  Person  saving  a 
world.     I  am  forgiven  and  saved  by  an  act  which  saves 
the  world.     For  it  not  only  gives  me  moral  power   to 
confront  the  whole  world  and  surmount  it,  but  it  unites 
me  in   a   new   sympathy  with  all   mankind,  and  it  em- 
powers me  not  only  to  face  but  to  hail  eternity.     And 
this  it  does  not  for  me,  but  for  whosoever  will.     Surely 
the  Christ  who  re-creates  me  in  that  faith  in  God  must 
be   God.     This  is  the  report  of  my  faith,   and    of  the 
Church's  faith,  upon  the  act  to  which  it  owes  its  own 
existence  as  an  act.     Is  it  to  be  amenable  to  unfaith  ? 
Actor  sequitur  forum  ret,  said  Roman  law.     The  venue  of 
criticism  is  in  the  court  of  the  challenged  faith.     That  is, 
the  true  and  fruitful  criticism  is  that  within  the  believing 
Church  under  the  final  standard  of  grace.     It  is  a  part  of 
that  self-criticism  of  the  Church  whose  classic  case  is  the 
Reformation. 

What  Christ  has  done  for  me  has  become  possible  only 
by  what  He  did  even  more  powerfully  for  others  whose 


VII.]         The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  205 

faith  and  experience  have  been  deeper  and  richer  than 
mine,  but  who  reflect  my  experience  all  the  same,  even 
while  they  diversify  and  enlarge  it  mightily.  Standing 
over  my  experience  is  the  experience  of  the  whole 
evangelical  succession.  And  standing  over  that  is  the 
historic  fact  of  Christ's  own  person,  and  His  conscious- 
ness of  Himself  ("All  things  are  delivered  to  me  of  the 
Father  ")  as  Lord  of  the  world,  Lord  of  nature  in 
miracle,  of  the  soul  in  redemption,  and  of  the  future  in 
judgment.  When  I  meet  Him  in  my  inmost  soul  I  meet 
one  whose  own  inmost  soul  felt  itself  to  be  all  that,  and 
who  has  convinced  the  moral  flower  of  the  race,  in  the 
whole  historic  Church,  that  He  is  what  He  knew  Himself 
to  be.  And  in  that  conviction  the  Church  has  become 
the  finest  product  of  Humanity,  and  the  mightiest  power 
that  ever  entered  and  changed  the  course  of  history  from 
its  moral  centre. 

Our  experience  of  Christ  is  therefore  an  absolutely 
different  thing  from  our  experience  of  saint  or  Virgin. 
In  their  case,  granting  it  were  actual,  the  visitation 
might  be  but  my  experience;  in  His  case  it  is  my  faith, 
which  concerns  not  a  phase  of  me  whereof  I  am  con- 
scious, but  the  whole  of  my  moral  self  and  racial  destiny 
whereof  I  am  but  poorly  conscious.  Faith  is  the  grand 
venture  in  which  we  commit  our  whole  soul  and  future 
to  the  confidence  that  Christ  is  not  an  illusion  but  the 
reality  of  God.  We  may  respond  to  a  saint,  but  to 
Christ  we  belong. 

IV 

The  third  part  of  my  answer  would  expand  what  I 
have  touched  on,  a  few  words  back,  in  regard  to  the 
consciousness  of  Christ. 


2o6  The  Pet  son  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

I  have  referred  to  the  individual  experience,  and  to  its 
expansion  in  the  experience  of  the  Church.  But  is  this 
enough  to  give  us  the  reaUty  of  a  supernatural  (or  rather 
a  superhistoric)  Christ  ?  If  it  were,  then  v^^e  should  be 
in  this  difficulty,  that  the  experience  of  believers  would 
be  the  seat  of  God's  revelation  to  us.  And  fresh 
difficulties  arise  out  of  that.  If  it  be  so,  then  do  we 
not  give  the  Church  (as  the  collective  experience)  a 
prerogative  which,  even  if  it  does  not  rise  to  the  claim 
of  Rome,  yet  puts  the  individual  conscience  too  much  at 
its  mercy,  and  obtrudes  the  Church  between  it  and 
Christ  ?  And,  again,  if  it  be  so,  what  was  the  seat  of 
God's  revelation  to  the  very  first  Church  of  all,  to  the 
first  believers  with  no  Church  behind  them  ?  And  what 
place  is  left  for  the  Bible,  the  record,  at  all,  except  a 
mere  subsidiary  one  in  support  of  the  supreme  experience 
of  a  Church  ?  Whereas  the  Bible,  no  less  than  the 
Church,  was  a  parallel  result  of  the  Gospel,  and  part  of 
the  revelationary  purpose  of  God.  The  gift  of  the 
Spirit  *  to  the  Apostles  was  not  simply  to  confirm 
personal  faith  but  to  equip  them  efficiently  for  their 
apostolic,  preaching,  witnessing  work. 

We  must  pass  within  the  circle  of  the  first  Church's 
experience  and  testimony,  and  find  a  means  of  stepping 
off  the  last  verge  of  its  direct  documentation  on  to  sure 
moral  ground  where  the  documents  cease.  We  must 
pass  by  faith  from  the  field  of  the  first  faith  certificated 
in  the  documents  to  the  historic  reality  behind  the  wall 
of  documents,  and  within  the  ring  fence  of  the  testifying 
Church. 

*  The   difficult    question   as   to   the  relation   between  Christ  and  the 

Spirit   (especially  for  St.  Paul)  is  too  large  for  side  treatment.     I  only 

note  that  our  communion  is  not  with  the  Spirit,  but  in  the  Spirit,  with 
Father  and  Son. 


vn.]  The  Testitnotiy  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  207 

And  we  are  compelled  to  do  so  by  the  very  nature  of 
that  faith  and  those  documents  themselves.  If  we  are 
not  to  stultify  the  first  Church  and  all  its  history,  we 
must  recognise  a  point  on  which  critics  so  antagonistic 
to  each  other  as  Schaeder  and  Lobstein  agree,*  that  the 
Gospel  about  Jesus  in  the  first  Church  truly  reflected 
Jesus'  Gospel  of  Himself,  and  grew  inevitably  out  of  it. 
We  could  not  speak  of  Jesus  with  any  respect  if  his 
influence  not  only  could  not  protect  His  first  followers 
from  idolatry  in  placing  Him  where  they  did — beside 
God  in  their  worship — but  actually  promoted  that 
idolatry.  If  they  included  Christ  in  his  own  Gospel, 
then  he  did.  It  was  not  in  the  teeth  of  him  that  they 
made  him  an  object  of  faith  and  worship  along  with  the 
Father.  They  could  never  have  treated  him,  those 
disciples  who  had  been  with  him,  in  a  way  which  would 
have  horrified  him  as  much  as  some  apostles  were 
horrified  at  the  attempt  to  worship  them  at  Lystra.  If 
they  found  him  Saviour  through  death  from  sin,  found 
him  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Eternal  Christ,  then  he 
offered  himself  as  such  in  some  form  or  other. 

Accordingly  the  question  becomes  one  of  the  interpre- 
tation of  his  self-consciousness  as  the  Gospels  offer  it 
upon  the  whole.  We  are  borne  onward  by  the  experi- 
ence of  the  Church  upon  the  experience  of  Christ  in  so 
far  as  he  revealed  it.  The  Church's  first  thought  of 
him  was  substantially  one  with  his  own  thought  of 
himself.  What  was  that  ?  Was  it  a  thought  which 
placed  him  with  men,  facing  God  and  moving  towards 
God,  or  with  God  facing  men  and  moving  to  them? 
Was   he    not  always  with  men,  but  from  beside  God  ?^ 

♦See  Die  christlichi  W$lt,  1907,  No.  19,  Sp.  529. 


2o8  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

Can  our  relation  to  him,  if  we  take  his  construction  of 
it,  be  parallel  to  our  relation  to  any  apostle,  saint,  virgin, 
or  hero  ?  Into  the  self-consciousness  of  Christ  I  have 
already  gone.  I  can  only  refer  again  to  all  the  passages 
of  the  Gospels  which  have  their  focus  in  Mat.  xi.  25  ff.,* 
and  which  reveal  the  sense  of  his  complete  mastery  of 
the  world  of  nature,  of  the  soul,  and  of  the  future.  He 
forgave  the  soul  and  claimed  to  judge  it.  He  determined 
our  eternal  lyelation  to  God.  And  he  used  nature  at  will 
for  the  supreme  purposes  of  grace  and  eternity. 

§  §  § 
But  we  must  here  take  another  step  which  replaces  us 
where  we  set  out,  though  on  a  higher  plane.  This 
power  of  which  Jesus  was  so  sure  was  not  there  simply 
to  make  a  vast  and  placid  self-consciousness.  He  was 
not  there  simply  as  a  reservoir  of  moral  power  instead 
of  its  agent.  If  he  had  the  power  it  was  not  as  a  miser 
of  power,  to  enjoy  the  satisfaction  of  possessing  it  in 
self-poised  and  self-sufficient  reserve,  not  to  be  a  quiescent 
character  reposing  in  God.  He  was  there  to  exercise 
the  power  in  historic  action.  And  as  it  was  moral 
power,  it  could  only  go  out  in  moral  achievement.  He 
was  there  for  a  task  in  which  the  whole  of  his  power 
should  be  expended.  He  was  there  to  do  something 
which  only  his  power  could  do.  If  he  had  power  more 
than  all  the  world's,  it  was  to  overcome  the  world  in 
another  than  the  individualist  and  ascetic  sense.  It  was 
to  subdue  it  to  himself.  The  Son  was  not  only  to  affect 
it,  but  to  regain  it  for  the  Father.  He  was  not  simply 
to  rule,  but  to  redeem.     He  was  there  for  action  ;  and 

"*  Surely  the  criticism  which  dissolves  this  passage  leaves  us  with  little 
but  dissolving  views  of  anything. 


vn.J  The  Testimony  of  Experience  in  the  Soul  209 

it  was  action  commensurate  both  with  his  person,  and 
with  the  world,  and  with  the  world's  moral  extremity. 
He  was  there  to  do  that  which  all  the  accounts  declare 
was  done  in  the  Cross — to  conquer  for  mankind  their 
eternal  life.  It  was  not  simply  to  fill  men's  souls  at  His 
as  from  a  fountain,  but  to  achieve  for  them  and  in  them 
a  victory  whose  prolonged  action  (and  not  mere  echo) 
should  be  their  eternal  life.  With  all  his  power  he 
was  there  for  one  vast  eternal  deed,  which  can  only  be 
described  as  the  Redemption,  the  new  Creation,  of  the 
race.  Nothing  less  could  afford  scope  for  the  exercise 
of  such  power  as  his,  if  it  was  a  power  that  must  work 
to  an  active  head,  and  could  not  be  held  in  mere 
benignant  self-possession,  in  quiescent,  massive,  brim- 
ming Goethean  calm.  The  moral  personality  must  all 
be  put  into  a  corresponding  deed.  What  is  the  deed 
which  gives  effect  to  the  whole  tremendous  moral 
resource  of  Jesus  ?  There  is  not  one  except  his  death. 
If  we  reduce  that  simply  to  his  life's  violent  and 
premature  close,  then  we  are  without  any  adequate 
expression  in  action  of  so  vast  a  moral  personality. 
That  personality  becomes  a  truncated  and  ineffectual 
torso;  or  it  becomes  but  an  aesthetic  quantity,  an  object  of 
moral  and  spiritual  admiration,  and  the  source  of  pro- 
found religious  influences  and  impressions,  but  not  of 
living  faith  and  of  eternal  life.  It  is  a  grand  piece  of 
still-life,  spectacular  but  not  dramatic,  with  spell  but  not 
power.  It  can  refine  but  not  regenerate,  cultivate  but 
not  recreate.  And  had  Jesus  not  found  in  his  death 
the  regenerative  outlet  for  the  infinite  moral  power  in 
his  person.  He  would  have  been  rent  witii  the  unrest 
and  distraction  of  prisoned  genius.  He  would  have  been 
no  expression  of  the  peace   that  goes  with    the  saving 


2IO         The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ       [lect.  vn. 

power  of  God,  peace  which  he  then  could  neither  have 
nor  give.  But  the  finahty  of  what  he  did  as  God  on 
the  cross  is  the  source  of  that  unearthly  rest  which  is 
the  peculium  of  the  true  Church.  And  it  is  lost  from 
all  the  Churches  that  are  more  earnest  in  bringing  a 
Kingdom  than  in  working  out  a  Kingdom  already 
brought.  These  Churches  and  their  efforts  may  have 
much  power,  but  they  lack  the  divinest  power  which  is 
also  spell;  and  they  fail  to  attract  those  that  crave 
from  power  not  only  results  but  peace. 


LECTURE    VIII 

THE  MORALISING  OF  DOGMA,  ILLUSTRATED 
BY    THE    OMNIPOTENCE    OF    GOD 


LECTURE    VIII 

THE    MORALISING    OF   DOGMA,    ILLUSTRATED    BY   THE 
OMNIPOTENCE    OF   GOD 

In  all  the  Churches  but  those  of  sheer  external 
authority  dogma  has  succumbed  to  the  solvent  of 
criticism.  By  which  word  dogma  is  not  necessarily 
meant  positive  truth,  but  dogma  as  such,  the  specific 
theological  constructions  from  the  past  which  have  been 
sealed  with  ecclesiastical  authority  as  formally  final.  A 
Church  must  always  have  a  dogma,  implicit  or  explicit. 
A  cohesive  Church  must  have  a  coherent  creed.  But  it 
must  be  a  dogma  the  Church  holds,  not  one  that  holds 
the  Church.  The  life  is  in  the  body,  not  in  the  system. 
It  must  be  a  dogma,  revisable  from  time  to  time  to  keep 
pace  with  the  Church's  growth  as  a  living  body  in  a 
living  world.  The  study  of  theology  must  go  on  and  go 
forward.  Solution  after  solution  of  the  great  problems 
must  be  both  attempted  and  encouraged  by  vital  faith. 
First  the  pursuit  and  formulation  of  doctrine  by  indi- 
vidual thinkers  or  groups  must  be  pursued  and  honoured 
as  an  energy  inferior  to  none  in  the  varied  lifework  of 
the  Church.  And  then,  at  certain  stages  of  the  process, 
certain  Churches  may  feel  that  a  point  of  agreement 
has  been  reached,  which  enables  them,  if  other  reasons 

0  ai3 


214  ^^^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

make  it  desirable,  to  state  their  common  view  in  a  new 
form,  as  a  breathing  place  for  their  mental  energy,  a 
salute  to  other  Churches,  or  a  guide  for  their  own 
catechumens.  The  idea  of  a  dogma,  as  the  organised 
declaration  or  confession  by  any  Church  of  its  collective 
doctrine,  is  only  the  intellectual  counterpart  of  the  idea 
of  the  organised  Church  itself.  No  Church  can  live 
without  more  or  less  organisation,  which  must  include 
not  its  machinery  only  but  its  thought.  A  mere  brother- 
hood needs  no  theology ;  but  then  it  has  no  stay  and  no 
influence  in  history.  It  is  only  a  sympathetic  group. 
But  a  Church  must  have  a  creed,  either  tacit  or  express, 
else  it  is  no  church.  Christianity  certainly  is  more  than 
its  truth,  but  there  is  no  Christianity  apart  from  its 
truth,  A  religion  of  mere  affinities  is  no  more  a  religion 
than  one  of  mere  freedom.  There  must  be  a  belief,  and 
an  entrusted  entail  of  belief.  The  difficulty  begins  with 
the  question  how  far  the  collective  belief  is  to  be  pressed 
upon  individual  members  or  ministers — the  question  of 
subscription.  The  two  questions  are  constantly  con- 
fused by  thoughtless  people.  A  creed  which  is  but  declara- 
tory, and  corporate,  and  binding  on  honour  is  confused 
with  particular  and  individual  subscription  to  it,  binding 
in  right  and  giving  legal  status.  And  the  confusion  is 
increased  when  people  jump  to  the  conclusion  that 
dogma,  or  the  collective  expression  of  a  Church's  belief, 
must  be  final  in  a  given  form.  It  is  now  widely  recog- 
nised that  every  form  of  belief  must  be  changeable  in 
proportion  to  its  detailed  length,  and  permanent  in 
proportion  to  its  condensed  brevity.  And  the  influences 
that  now  recast  the  great  old  fabrics  of  faith,  once  so 
new  and  adequate,  are  part  of  the  action  of  the  same 
divine  spirit  which  put  them  there  on  a  time  to    serve 


VIII. j  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  215 

their  hour  and  age.     It  is  now  preparing  a  new  synthesis 
from' the  old  and  positive  faith. 

To-day  the  great  fabrics  of  historic  dogma  not  only 
succumb  to  the  calm  decay  of  time,  but  they  crumble 
faster  than  ever  under  the  acid  that  now  fills  the  air — 
under  modern  criticism.  This  is  a  source  of  grief  and 
fear  to  many  at  one  extreme,  while  to  some  at  the  other 
it  is  a  source  of  almost  unholy  joy.  For  the  great 
Churches  which  have  publicly  and  expressly  pinned 
their  existence  to  specific  dogma,  patristic  or  mediaeval,  it 
is  of  course  a  most  serious  thing.  The  Roman  Church 
appears  to  be  honeycombed  with  a  modernism  that  may 
lead  either  to  its  disintegration  or  to  a  new  reformation. 
On  the  other  hand,  for  those  free  lances  of  the  genial 
heart  and  sterile  mind,  who  face  theology  as  a  bull  greets 
scarlet,  and  regard  positive  views  as  a  tramp  does  four 
walls,  the  collapse  of  the  old  structure  seems  as  the 
opening  of  the  prison-house  to  them  that  are  bound. 

§  §  § 
Dogma  is  the  science  of  faith.  Every  department  of 
science  has  its  dogma;  and  in  the  hierarchy  of  the 
sciences  these  dogmas  qualify  and  supplement  each  other. 
In  one  region  we  have  the  dogma  of  gravitation ;  in 
another  that  of  evolution  ;  in  another  that  of  affinity ; 
in  another  (if  it  be  another)  the  molecular  dogma;  and 
so  on.  Thus  in  the  region  of  spiritual  life  we  have  also 
a  science.  We  have  a  science  of  faith.  And  the  truth 
of  it  is  accepted  for  fundamental  by  the  Churches,  the 
living  bodies  concerned,  just  as  gravitation  and  the 
like  are  accepted  by  the  universities,  which  do  not,  for 
instance,  enter  discussion  with  the  man  who  challenges 
the  rotundity  of  the  earth  and  starts  an  apostolate  of 
its  flatness. 


2i6  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

Dogma  is  the  science  which  underlies  the  mentality  of 
those  living  and  moving  societies.  And  it  exists  upon 
experienced  faith  in  the  holy  love  of  a  changeless  and 
saving  God  in  Christ,  just  as  physical  science  exists 
upon  a  faith  in  the  uniformity  of  His  action  in  Nature. 

But  there  is  an  ambiguity  which  we  must  realise  and 
avoid  in  the  phrase,  a  science  of  faith.     There  are  things 
it  seems  to  mean  and  does  not.    It  does  not  mean  a  science 
of  thought  attached  to  faith,  like  Greek  metaphysics.      It 
does  not  mean  a  metaphysic  of  Being,  or  a  philosophy  of 
jurisprudence,  imported  into  the  Christian  faith  by  the 
circumstances   of  its   history  and  growth.     Nor  on  the 
other    hand   does   it    mean   a    science   of  the  subjective 
religious  acts,   a  psychology  of  religion.     Far  less  does 
it  mean    that    the    psychology  of  religion  shall  provide 
the  dogmas  or  "  broad  general  truths  of  religion,"  to  whose 
test  every  belief  of  faith  must  submit,  as  the  modern  way 
is.     But  it  means  the  science  of  religion  when  religion 
rises  to  the  positive  faith  we  have  in  Christianity,   the 
science  of  religion  as  a  moral  relation,  a  living  and  historic 
relation    between    two    personalities,    two   consciences ; 
which  in  Christianity  is  a  redeeming  relation.     It  is  the 
science  of  realised  redemption.     It  is  a  science  wherein 
faith  is  not  so  much  the  observed  object  as  the  observing 
subject.     It  is  faith   thinking  and  not  only  faith  thought 
of.     It  is  the  view  of  things  created  by  the  new  man  and 
not  discovered  by  the  modern  man.     And  it  is  upon  the 
lines  of  such  an  ethical   religion  alone  that  we  reach  that 
moralising  of  dogma  which  is  the  demand  of  many  who 
are  not  prepared  to  dismiss  it. 

§         §         § 
No  dogma  has  been   affected  by  the  influences  of  the 
age  so  much  as  that  of  the  person  of  Christ.     It  was  the 


VIII. J  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  217 

doctrine  of  the  Church  in  the  first  age,  when  a  united 
Church  laid  the  lines  of  its  dogma  down ;  and  none  has 
felt  like  it  the  dissolving  effect  of  a  divided  Church. 
And  the  Chalcedonian  or  Athanasian  form  of  the  belief, 
which  is  embalmed  in  the  current  formula  of  two  natures 
in  one  person  in  Christ,  may  be  said  to  have  been 
seriously  shaken  wherever  modern  conditions  have  been 
realised.  This  has  occurred  the  more  readily  as  the 
creeds  in  which  it  was  embodied  served  for  their  day  the 
purpose  rather  of  repelling  errors  than  of  adjusting  truths. 
The  truths  were  not  really  and  inwardly  adjusted,  but 
only  placed  together ;  and  they  are  thus  the  more  easily 
shaken  apart.  They  were  married  but  not  wedded,  or  if 
wedded  not  welded  ;  and  though  they  lived  in  the  same 
house,  it  was  not  without  friction.  The  human 
mind,  the  moral  experience,  were  not  yet  ripe  enough. 
Psychology,  and  especially  religious  psychology,  had  not 
then  come  into  existence ;  and,  while  the  strongest 
assertions  were  made  about  the  coexistence  of  the  two 
natures  as  a  postulate  of  faith,  it  was  beyond  the  power 
of  the  metaphysic  which  then  prevailed  to  show  how 
they  could  cohere  in  a  personal  unity.  The  attempts 
failed  even  at  a  later  date,  when  a  doctrine  of  mutual 
permeation  (or  Trf/nxwp/crfj)  took  the  place  of  a  doctrine 
of  conjunction  and  mutual  action  (or  crvvdijida  and 
dvTiSoo-is).  With  the  modern  growth  of  psychology, 
and  the  modern  revolution  of  metaphysic,  such  formulae 
were  bound  to  dissolve.  They  were  based  on  an  early 
metaphysic  of  natures  and  a  crude  science  of  person- 
ality. But  the  metaphysic  of  history,  the  modern 
primacy  of  personality,  and  the  new  stress  on  experience, 
coupled  with  a  critical  historicism  equally  modern,  have 
opened  a  better  way ;    and    they    keep   Christ   and    his 


2i8  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

problem  from  retiring  into  the  outskirts  of  thought. 
No  dissolution  of  the  old  dogma  prevents  the  Chris- 
tological  question  from  still  being  the  question  of  the 
hour  and  of  the  future  for  religious  thought,  when  we 
are  not  monopolised  by  the  modern  social  problem. 
The  discredit  of  the  dogma  has  also  been  increased  by 
the  modern  return  to  the  Bible  and  its  Gospel.  We 
find  the  scripture  doctrine  of  the  subject,  inchoate  as 
it  is  in  form,  to  be  more  satisfactory  than  the 
ecclesiastical  development  of  it  for  a  starting  point.  And 
it  is  satisfactory  for  this  reason.  It  remoralises  the 
whole  issue  by  restoring  it  to  personal  religion.  Yet  let 
it  not  be  thought  that  the  moralising  of  dogma  makes  it 
less  urgent,  less  incumbent,  less  dogmatic.  For  what  is  so 
insistent,  inevitable,  and  dogmatic  as  the  categorical 
imperative  which  is  at  the  moral  centre  ? 

At  the  Reformation,  with  its  concentration  of  religion 
on  the  conscience,  and  on  the  guilty  conscience,  Chris- 
tianity became  once  more  personal  and  evangelical ;  that 
is,  it  became  predominantly  ethical.  The  key  to  the 
religion  was  found  in  personal  faith.  It  was  not  in  the 
institutes  of  theology  or  the  institutions  of  the  Church. 
It  was  in  moral  and  religious  experience,  in  the  contact 
of  a  historic  Redeemer  with  our  living  and  personal 
experience  of  redemption.  That  was  what  had  really 
made  Christianity  in  the  first  century.  And  it  was 
what  was  lost  in  a  Church  dominated  by  Chalcedonian 
metaphysic  with  an  Aristotelian  editing  ;  till  the  personal 
faith  of  the  New  Testament  was  rescued  from  a  religion 
chiefly  institutional  and  creedal  at  the  Reformation. 
Three  centuries  later  another  powerful  effort  was  made 
by  Hegelianism  to  scholasticise  Christianity  anew,  and  to 
rationalise  Christology  on  the  largest  lines.     The  older 


VIII. J  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  2ig 

and  narrower  Rationalism  had  simply  abolished  Chris- 
tology  by  reducing  Christ  to  a  mere  man,  and  any  science 
of  him  to  the  psychology  of  genius.  And  Hegel  seemed 
to  restore  all  by  discovering  a  Christology  in  the  very 
nature  of  thought  and  being.  But  the  capture  of  Hegel 
by  his  extreme  left  has  brought  his  system  to  much  the 
same  effect  as  the  old  rationalism.  While  the  reformed 
and  evangelical  spirit  has,  by  its  revival,  notably  in 
Schleiermacher,  Ritschl,  and  others,  discredited  all  the 
Hegelian  constructions.  The  Incarnation,  being  for  a 
moral  and  not  a  metaphysical  purpose,  must  be  in  its 
nature  moral.  Its  metaphysic  should  therefore  be  a 
metaphysic  of  ethics,  and  not  of  thought  as  pure  being. 
And  we  are  shut  up  to  the  method  of  experience  to 
explain  the  act  of  grace  in  Christ's  coming,  and  to 
release  it  from  rational  permissions  in  order  to  be  an 
autonomous  power.  Religion  is  an  ultimate  in  con- 
sciousness— according  to  its  most  recent  psychology. 
And  the  higher  it  is,  so  much  the  more  ultimate,  and 
the  less  vassal  to  rational  permissions.  It  is  living 
faith  that  has  the  promise  of  understanding  the  object 
of  faith.  Certainly  nothing  but  faith  can  decide 
whether  Christ  is  properly  an  object  of  faith  or  only  its 
chief  subject.  No  historic  inquiry  can  decide  that,  as  we 
shall  see.  A  religion  of  moral  redemption  can  only  be 
understood  by  a  Church  of  the  morally  redeemed,  as 
rational  science,  in  its  area,  can  only  be  pursued  by 
rational  minds  schooled  to  its  method.  The  theology  of 
such  a  gospel  opens  only  to  a  Church  of  broken  and 
converted  men.  Only  the  saved  have  the  real  secret  of 
the  Saviour.  That  is  the  religion  of  the  matter,  which 
carries  its  theology.  The  Godhead  that  became  incarnate 
in  Jesus  Christ  did  so  not  to  convince,  but  to  save.  God* 


220  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

head  became  incarnate  so  far  and  in  such  fashion  as  the 
purpose  of  redemption  prescribed.  It  became  incarnate 
in  the  manner  the  work  required.  Man's  need  determined 
God's  deed.  Christ  was  almighty— to  save.  In  a  word, 
the  work  of  Christ,  realised  in  the  Church's  experience 
through  faith,  becomes  the  avenue  and  the  key  to  the 
person  of  Christ.  Soteriology  is  the  way  of  access  to  Chris- 
tology.  But  where  we  come  down  to  a  bland  version  of 
salvation,  to  the  ebbs  and  flats  of  religion,  to  a  lay,  light, 
and  level  sense  of  holiness,  sin,  judgment,  and  grace — 
when  we  arrive  there  (either  through  lack  of  "  funda- 
mental brain  work,"  as  Rossetti  called  it,  or  of  radical 
soul  work)  then  the  person  of  Christ  becomes  unintel- 
ligible; impressive,  in  a  sense,  but  unintelligible.  And 
the  effort  of  the  Church's  thought  to  pierce  its  mystery 
is  dismissed  as  mere  metaphysic,  in  favour  of  an  aesthetic 
or  a  sentimental  regard  for  his  character  and  message. 
Most  elusive  of  all  is  the  effort  to  retain  the  old  pass- 
words, while  reducing  them  to  no  more  than  disguises 
in  luminous  paint  for  the  subjective  processes  of  a  self- 
saving  Humanity. 

§         §         § 
In  speaking  of  the  moralisation  of  Christology  by  the 

Reformation  and  the  modern  movements  in  its  train  I 
do  not  think  I  can  do  better  than  offer  here  a  free 
translation  of  a  passage  in  Melanchthon,  one  sentence  of 
which  has  recently  been  much  used  as  the  motto  for 
this  whole  tendency.  It  is  taken  from  the  preface  to 
the  Loci  of  1521. 

"  If  a  man  know  nothing  of  the  power  of  sin,  of  law, 
or  of  grace,  I  do  not  see  how  I  can  call  him  a 
Christian.  It  is  there  that  Christ  is  truly  known. 
The    knowledge    of    Christ    is    to    know  his  benefits. 


VIII.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  221 

taste  his  salvation,  and  experience  his  grace;  it  is  not, 
as  the  academic  people  say,  to  reflect  on  his  natures  and 
the  modes  of  his  incarnation.  If  you  do  not  know 
the  practical  purpose  for  which  he  took  flesh  and 
went  to  the  cross  what  is  the  good  of  knowing  his 
story?  Is  a  doctor  but  a  botanist?  Is  he  content 
to  know  the  forms  and  colours  of  his  herbs  ?  It  is 
their  virtue  that  counts.  So  with  Christ.  He  is  given 
us  as  our  remedy,  or,  in  Bible  phrase,  our  salvation. 
And  we  must  know  him  in  another  way  than  the 
scholars.  To  know  him  to  purpose  is  to  know  the 
demand  of  the  conscience  for  holiness,  the  source 
of  power  to  meet  it,  where  to  seek  grace  for  our 
sin's  failure,  how  to  set  up  the  sinking  soul  in  the 
face  of  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  how  to 
console  the  conscience  broken.  Is  that  what  any  of 
the  schools  teach,  metaphysical,  critical,  or  literary  ? 
Paul  in  Romans,  when  he  wants  to  condense  Chris- 
tian doctrine  into  a  compendium,  does  he  philosophise 
about  the  mysteries  of  the  Trinity,  or  the  method  of 
incarnation,  or  an  active  and  a  passive  creation  ? 
He  does  nothing  of  the  kind.  He  speaks  of  law, 
sin  and  grace ;  of  conscience,  guilt  and  salvation. 
These  are  the  topics  on  which  a  knowledge  of  Christ 
turns.  You  do  not  know  Christ  until  you  know 
these.  How  often  Paul  declares  to  his  believers  that 
he  prays  for  them  a  rich  knowledge  of  Christ.  He 
foresaw  that  we  should  one  day  leave  the  saving 
themes  and  turn  our  minds  to  discussions  cold  and 
foreign  to  Christ.  What  we  propose  to  do,  therefore, 
is  to  sketch  the  inwardness  of  those  passages  that  com- 
mend Christ  to  you,  that  settle  the  conscience,  and 
establish  the  soul  against  Satan.      Most    people  look 


222  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

in  the  Bible  only  for  classic  instruction  about  goodness 
and  evil.  But  it  is  a  philosophic  more  than  a  Chris- 
tian quest." 

§         §         §    ^ 
The  modern  moralisation  of  religion  thus  prescribes  a 

new  manner  of  inquiry  on  such  a  central  subject  as  the 
person  of  Christ.  It  plants  us  anew  on  the  standpoint 
of  the  Bible,  where  all  human  ethic  is  pointed,  trans- 
figured and  reissued  in  Christ's  new  creation  of  the  moral 
soul.  This  rebirth  of  the  race  is  not  a  thing  yet  to  be 
done,  but  a  thing  already  done  and  given  into  our  hands  ; 
"  God  hath  regenerated  us  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ 
from  the  dead  "  (i  Peter  i.  3) ;  and  it  is  prolonged  in 
the  Christian  experience  of  many  centuries.  What, 
then,  does  such  a  tremendous  and  revolutionary  fact 
involve  ?  How  must  we  think  of  him  who  brought 
it  to  pass  ?  As  the  incarnation  of  natural  and  arbitrary 
omnipotence?  No,  but  as  one  who  was  potent  for 
everything  morally  required  by  the  one  need  of  sinful 
Humanity,  and  the  one  demand  of  Holy  Eternal  Love. 

Was  it  by  a  moral  way,  by  moral  conquest,  that 
Christ  came  to  his  final  glory?  Then  it  must 
have  been  by  a  moral  way  that  he  left  it.  Is  the  end 
of  our  salvation  a  moral  glory?  Then  the  origin  of  it 
must  have  issued  from  moral  glory.  Is  it  an  eternal 
salvation?  Then  its  moral  glory  rose  in  a  moral 
Eternity.  Did  the  Eternal  come  by  a  transcendent 
moral  act  ?  Then  that  act  began  in  Eternity.  A  final 
salvation  means  a  saving  act  eternal  and  absolute. 
Some  metaphysic  is  here  involved,  certainly,  but  it  is  a 
metaphysic  of  the  conscience.  It  starts  from  the  con- 
viction that  for  life  and  history  the  moral  is  the  real,  and 
that  the  movements  of  the  Great  Reality  must  be  morally 


VIII.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  223 

construed  as  they  are  morally  revealed.  The  spiritual 
world  is  not  the  world  of  noetic  process  or  cosmic  force, 
but  of  holy,  i.e.  moral,  order,  act,  and  power.  Now  con- 
cerning the  union  of  the  two  natures  in  Christ  the  old 
dogma  thought  in  a  far  too  natural  and  non-moral  way. 
Its  categories  were  too  elemental  and  physical.  It  con- 
ceived it  as  an  act  of  might,  of  immediate  divine  power, 
an  act  which  united  the  two  natures  into  a  person  rather 
than  through  that  person.  It  united  them  miraculously 
rather  than  morally,  into  the  existence  of  the  incarnate 
personality  rather  than  by  his  action.  The  person  was 
the  resultant  of  the  two  natures  rather  than  the  agent  of 
their  union.  They  were  united  into  a  person  whose 
action  only  began  after  the  union,  and  did  not  affect  it. 
It  began  (according  to  the  dogma)  in  the  miraculous  con- 
ception, which  was  not  an  ethical  act,  rather  than  in  the 
grace  of  the  eternal  son,  who,  for  our  sakes,  from  rich 
became  poor.  There  can  be  no  unity  of  spirits  like 
God  and  man  except  in  a  moral  way,  by  personal  action 
which  is  moral  in  its  method  as  well  as  in  its  aim.  As 
Christians  we  are  united  with  Christ  by  a  moral, 
i.e.  a  personal,  process  ;  and  can  we  think  otherwise  of 
the  manner  of  his  union  with  God  which  is  its  base? 
It  is  only  in  the  way  of  moral  modulation  that  the 
divine  Logos  could  become  true  man.  That  is  where  the 
Christian  differs  from  all  pagan  notions  of  incarnation. 
And  the  Christian  idea  is  so  different,  so  ethical,  because 
its  origin  and  its  seat  is  in  the  cross,  which  is  the  axis  of 
the  racial  conscience,  and  the  historic  focus  of  moral 
mediation.  It  is  the  cross  and  not  the  cradle  that  has 
the  secret  of  the  Lord. 

But,  indeed,  it  is  ethically  misleading  to  speak  of  union 
in  such  a  case.     Union  is  a  term  too  physical,  too  natural. 


224  ^^'^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

Even  terms  like  permeation  or  interpenetration  are  so. 
And  this  is  the  cardinal  error  of  the  old  dogma.  It  works 
upon  a  spiritual  subject  with  physical  instead  of  moral 
categories.  Its  incarnation  takes  place  not  by  spiritual 
power  but  by  natural  power,  however  vastly  magnified  and 
deified,  by  a  fiat  rather  than  a  moral  act.  The  error  is 
very  persistent.  I  admit  that  some  Bible  phrases  give  the 
wrong  lead,  as  when  we  read  of  the  Spirit  being 
poured  out,  and  without  measure.  You  find  it  in  some  of 
the  recent  liberal  interpretations  of  Christ  as  a  human 
personality  completely  filled  by  the  Spirit.  But  that  is 
really  docetic,  however  imposing.  It  dehumanises,  it 
depersonalises,  and  therefore  it  degrades,  the  human 
nature  to  a  vessel  for  the  divine.  It  reduces  the  human 
below  the  personal  level  by  treating  it  as  a  mere  recep- 
tacle or  tenement  of  the  Godhead.  This  is  a  poor  and 
passive  idea  of  humanity  instead  of  a  moral,  which  must 
be  active  even  in  its  receptivity.  And  we  are  but  repeating 
a  form  of  the  old  error  which  construed  the  human 
nature  as  no  more  than  a  coat  which  was  put  on, 
while  the  divine  became  but  a  palladium  dropped  from 
Heaven  in  human  form,  with  an  action  more  mechanical 
than  moral.  Whatever  may  be  said  against  the 
Kenosis  doctrine,  at  least  it  made  the  whole  Christ 
on  earth  the  result  of  a  grand  moral  act  in  the  Heavens. 

§  §  § 
"We  might,  perhaps,  put  the  matter  in  this  way.  Let 
us  examine  a  dogma  which  underlies  so  much  popular 
religion  and  creates  so  much  popular  scepticism — the 
dogma  of  God's  natural  omnipotence.  Jesus,  we  say,  was 
the  incarnation  to  the  world  of  the  power  of  Almighty 
God.  But,  it  is  at  once  objected,  we  see  in  Jesus  neither 
omnipotence  nor  omniscience.     He  claimed  neither.     Do 


VIII.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  225 

you  claim  for  him,  say,  divine  omnipotence  ?  The  answer 
to  that  question  must  be  Yes  and  No. 

Surely  we  must  distinguish  two  ideas  as  to  the  relation 
of  power  and  goodness.  Must  we  not  distinguish  between 
the  power  which,  though  it  has  another  and  lower  nature, 
may  be  put  wholly  at  the  service  of  justice,  and  the  power 
which  in  its  nature  is  justice  ;  between  the  might  that 
serves  right  and  the  might  which  is  right  ?  Can  we  not 
distinguish  between  a  visible  thing,  like  the  might  of 
armies  employed  in  a  just  cause,  in  the  cause,  it  may  be, 
of  universal  justice,  between  that  and  a  spiritual  power 
which  is  the  intrinsic  might  of  justice,  the  might  of 
holiness,  when  Truth  unarmed  uplifts  its  head,  and  shows 
how  awful  goodness  is  ?  Is  there  not  the  power  that 
works  for  righteousness  and  the  power  that  is  righteous- 
ness at  work? 

All  our  natural  life,  of  course,  starts  from  the  former, 
from  the  idea  of  physical  power,  which  may  or  may  not 
be  brought  into  the  service  of  justice  ;  and  we  have  that 
conception  of  power  fixed  upon  us  by  the  start.  When 
we  begin  to  examine  our  notions  we  find  that  established 
in  possession.  So  that  justice  at  best  is  understood  but 
socially — as  natural  happiness  made  general.  Socialism 
is  simply  the  Christianity  of  the  natural  man,  the  Church 
of  the  not  yet  born  again.  What  is  the  idea,  the  expecta- 
tion, by  which  natural  men  seek  to  judge  if  the  course  of 
the  world  is  worthy  of  God,  and  the  experience  of  life 
compatible  with  His  goodness  ?  Is  it  not  the  idea 
of  omnipotence  for  happiness — the  unlimited  power  to 
possess  and  spread  happiness.  That  is  the  standard  of 
their  theodicy.  If  my  life,  if  multitudes  of  lives,  are 
lamed  or  crushed  by  calamity  how  can  I  believe  in  a  just, 
kind   and  omnipotent  God?  This  is  the  question  of  the 


226  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

natural  man.  The  vietier  of  a  God  is  to  use  His  omni- 
potence for  human  happiness  of  a  high  and  wide  sort. 
When  this  happiness  seems  to  fail  the  result  is  scepti- 
cism and  pessimism,  more  or  less  bitter.  Think  how  the 
Lisbon  earthquake  of  1755  shattered  the  rational  opti- 
mism of  that  thin  time  to  start  the  deliberate  pessimisms 
of  to-day.  It  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the  attempt  to 
measure  the  whole  of  anything  so  spiritual  as  life  or  God 
by  its  power  to  satisfy  natural  expectations.  That  is  not 
God's  prime  object ;  it  is  not  His  regimen  of  the  world  in 
the  final  account  he  gives  of  Himself,  His  purpose,  and 
His  creature's  destiny  in  the  cross  of  Christ.  His  is  not 
the  omnipotence  that  natural  happiness  requires,  far 
less  that  the  natural  imagination  pictures ;  but  it  is 
the  omnipotence  that  His  own  holiness  requires.  His  own 
purpose  not  of  love  simply  but  of  holy  love,  the 
omnipotence  required  by  His  own  perfection,  the  omnipo- 
tence required  to  establish  in  the  world  as  we  find  it, 
in  a  sinful  world,  a  kingdom  of  complete  communion 
with  His  Holy  Self  and  His  Eternal  blessedness.  All 
power  in  heaven  and  earth  is  delivered  to  the  victorious 
Holy  One,  and  to  Him  alone. 

We  thus  begin  with  such  notions  of  power  as  we  imbibe 
from  our  first  contact  with  it  in  natural  force,  elemental 
instincts,  or  imperious  wills.  And  we  carry  that  order 
into  our  thinking.  We  construe  omnipotence  accordingly. 
We  form  ideas  of  omnipotence  which  are  suggested  to 
us  by  nature,  and  then  we  demand  that  a  revelation  from 
God  shall  begin  by  accrediting  itself  to  those  natural 
notions — especially  by  some  miracle.  But  we  demand 
an  impossible  thing  when  we  look  for  such  a  reve- 
lation in  Christ — a  human  being  omnipotent  in  that 
sense.     A  human  being  with  natural  omnipotence  would 


VIII.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  227 

be  a  monster.  Christ  did  not  come  with  natural  omnipo- 
tence either  for  his  weapon  or  for  his  credentials.  He 
did  not  come  with  a  power  of  unlimited  miracle,  with  a 
blank  cheque  on  the  universal  energy.  His  omnipo- 
tence was  not  of  the  kingdom  of  nature  but  of  grace. 
His  power  was  both  held  and  used  under  moral 
conditions,  as  we  see  in  the  cases  where  it  was  arrested 
by  unbelief.  He  came  much  rather  to  convert  that 
natural  method,  nay  to  invert  it.  He  revealed  that 
holiness  was  the  divine  power,  and  did  not  wait  on 
power;  that  the  forces  of  creation  had  their  end, 
charter,  and  scope  in  a  moral  redemption,  and  they 
could  not  exceed  their  terms  of  reference;  that  holiness, 
that  moral  Godhead,  could  only  establish  itself  in  the 
world  by  its  own  nature,  and  not  by  natural  force ;  that 
his  Church  could  only  be  established  by  its  Gospel,  and 
not  by  anything  at  the  disposal  of  States,  or  at  the 
command  of  Empire.  His  kingdom  was  not  of  the  world. 
This  principle  gave  rise  to  a  struggle  within  Himself, 
in  the  temptation  He  mastered  ;  as  it  has  done  also 
within  His  Church,  in  the  temptation  to  which  she 
succumbed.  The  power  He  incarnated  was  the  intrinsic, 
supreme,  and  final  power  of  divine  conscience,  that  is,  of 
holy  love,  for  the  destiny  of  the  world.  This  is  the 
true  power  of  God  which  was  incarnated  in  Christ — 
this  morally  irresistible  power  of  holy  love. 

In  the  natural,  arbitrary,  and  unregenerate  sense  in 
which  we  understand  the  word,  God  is  not  omnipotent. 
All  things  do  not  work  together  for  an  omnipotent  God, 
but  for  love's  good  on  God's  scale,  for  an  absolutely  holy 
purpose,  to  them  that  love  God  for  His  holy  purpose 
(Rom.  viii.  28).  At  least  the  God  of  Christ  is  not  omnipo- 
tent in  any  other  sense  than  that.     The  God  incarnate  in 


228  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lbct. 

Christ  is  not.  He  can  do  only  the  things  that  are  con- 
gruous with  His  moral,  His  holy  nature  and  purpose.  But 
in  this  moral  sense  is  he  omnipotent  over  the  world  ? 
Is  he  in  final  command  of  history  ?  Is  he  secure  of  the 
reversion  of  time  ?  Well,  what  omnipotence  is  required 
for  that  ?  Is  it  not  the  power  of  holiness,  not  to  do  any- 
thing and  everything  suggested  by  human  egoism  or 
fantasy,  but  to  do  everything  required  for  its  own  effectual 
establishment  on  the  world  ?  The  purpose  of  a  world 
created  by  a  holy  God  must  be  holiness,  the  reflection 
and  communion  of  His  own  holiness.  Can  God  secure 
it  ?  What  the  world  actually  is  we  know,  if  we  let  our 
conscience  speak  its  verdict  on  history.  Is  it  in  the 
power  of  the  Holy  God,  through  the  very  holiness 
smitten  by  our  sin,  to  secure  such  a  world's  holy 
destiny  still  ?  That  is  the  ultimate  question  in  life. 
That  is  what,  in  one  form  or  another,  occupies  the 
first-class  minds.  And  to  that  question  Christ  and 
His  cross  are  the  answer,  or  they  have  no  meaning 
at  all.  They  reveal  in  their  foregone  victory  the  om- 
nipotence of  holiness  to  subdue  all  natural  powers 
and  forces,  all  natural  omnipotence,  to  the  moral  sanctity 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  And  if  they  do  not  reveal  that 
we  are  left  without  any  ground  of  certainty  about  a  holy 
ending  for  the  world  at  all.  And  our  guesses  will  be 
hopeful  according  to  our  sanguine  temperament,  our 
happy  circumstances,  our  small  insight,  or  our  low 
demand.  It  is  a  tremendous  revelation  and  achievement 
in  the  cross  of  Christ.  "  How  awful  goodness  is." 
The  more  we  know  about  cosmic  forces,  antres  vast, 
deserts  horrible,  Alps  of  thick  ribbed  ice,  seas,  continents, 
vastitudes  of  every  kind ;  of  geological  ages,  stellar 
spaces,    solar    storms;    of    creature    agonies,    of    social 


VIII.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  229 

miseries,  devilish  wickedness,  civilised  triumphs,  historic 
heroisms,  the  grandeur  of  genius  and  unquenchable  love ; 
of  all  the  passion,  for  evil  on  the  one  hand,  or,  on  the 
other,  for  the  Eternal,  Immortal,  and  Invisible  good — 
so  much  the  more  we  must  feel  how  awful  is  the  holy 
love  of  God,  that  has  secured  the  grand  issue  for  ever, 
that  surmounts  all  principalities  and  powers,  things  past, 
present,  and  to  come,  every  other  omnipotence ;  sur- 
mounts, nay  exploits,  them  all,  in  the  Holy  One  of  God, 
who  by  His  cross  is  the  same  world-conqueror  yesterday, 
to-day,  and  for  ever.  It  is  a  tremendous  claim.  And 
the  improbability  of  it  is  either  a  pious  absurdity ;  or  it 
is  the  quiet  irony  of  a  God  who  has  it  already  done  in 
the  hollow  of  His  hand.  Like  every  ultimate  interpreta- 
tion of  life  it  is  a  matter  of  insight — insight  into  the 
world,  the  Christ,  and  the  Cross.  What  is  lacking 
to  the  seers  and  geniuses  of  our  time,  like  Swinburne, 
Meredith,  or  Hardy,  is  still  lack  of  insight.  They 
see  into  "Love  in  the  valley" — and  how  lovely — what 
they  do  not  see  into  is  love  in  excelsis. 

§         §         § 
The    formula   of   the    union  of    two  natures    in    one 

person  is  essentially  a  metaphysical  formula,  and  the 
formula  of  a  Hellenic  metaphysic,  and  it  is  more  or  less 
archaic  for  the  modern  mind.  The  term  "  nature  "  is  a 
purely  metaphysical  term,  and  one  which  characterises  a 
scholastic  metaphysic  of  being  rather  than  a  modern  meta- 
physic of  ethic.  The  metaphysic  of  being,  if  not  banished 
from  modern  science,  tends  to  be  retained  only  in  so  far 
as  the  moral  is  regarded  as  the  real,  and  the  key  to  being 
is  found  in  personality.  Even  if  we  do  speak  at  all  now  of 
two  natures  in  one  person  the  accent  has  moved  from  the 
term    nature  to  the  term  person.      We    start   with    the 

R 


230  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

historic  reality  and  unity  of  Christ's  person.  We  work 
with  such  ethical  categories — with  ideas  like  personality, 
history,  and  society.  These  are  what  command 
thought,  rather  than  ideas  like  being,  substance,  or 
nature,  wherever  thought  works  out  its  new  creation  in 
Kant  and  comes  to  close  quarters  with  life.  Now  the 
ideas  of  personality  and  society,  which  mean  so  much  for 
history  and  religion,  are  condensed  in  such  an  idea  as 
marriage,  which  is  at  once  the  keystone  of  society  and  the 
great  symbol  of  Christ's  relation  to  man.  And  in 
marriage  the  ideal  is  (however  far  we  may  be  yet  from  its 
general  realization)  that  of  two  personalities  not  only 
united  but  completely  interpenetrating  in  love,  and  grow- 
ing into  one  dual  person.  "  The  two  shall  be  one  flesh  " 
— one  spiritual  personality.  This  interpenetration  is 
something  of  which  personality  alone  is  capable.  Any 
notion  Hke  "a  nature  "  is  too  physical  in  its  origin  and 
action  to  rise  really  above  the  impenetrability  of  matter, 
and  the  mutual  externality  of  each  such  nature.  This  is 
one  reason  why  a  union  of  natures  complete  enough  for 
personal  unity  has  been  so  hard  to  compass  with  the  old 
metaphysic,  which  did  not  rise  beyond  a  finer  physic,  or 
pass  eis  dkXh  yevo's.  The  marriage  relation  is  the  brief 
epitome  of  the  social  principle  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  of 
the  unity  of  Christ,  and  the  kind  of  unity  in  a  Triune 
God.  It  is  impossible  to  keep  Trinity  from  Tritheism  if 
we  interpret  personality  by  the  categories  of  being  or 
substance,  instead  of  interpreting  being  by  the  categories 
of  personality.  A  personality  is  much  more  than  intelli- 
gent or  conscious  substance,  however  refined.  In  this 
sense  personality  has  not  a  nature.  We  speak  at  times  of 
Christ  as  being  Himself  the  Kingdom  of  God  ;  and  it  is 
not  the  extravagant  phrase  that  some  minds  declare  it  to 


VIII.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  231 

be.  At  least  it  points  to  a  social  plurality  in  Him  in 
whom  His  whole  Church  lives.  Which  is  an  idea  of  the 
same  class  as  a  divine  dualism,  the  complete  interpenetra- 
tion,  in  that  "public  person,"  of  human  and  divine 
personality.  It  suggests  their  interpenetration  in  a  way 
of  which  wedlock  gives  the  symbol  or  ideal,  however  far 
short  it  might  fall  as  yet  of  being  the  actual  analogy 
which  it  will  one  day  become  in  the  Christian  evolution 
of  society,  and  of  thought  to  correspond.  As  the 
supreme  human  interests  grow  more  ethical,  as  the 
ethical  categories  more  and  more  come  to  dominate 
thought  in  a  life  whose  first  concern  is  personal  action, 
by  so  much  the  more  must  the  great  problems  that  sur- 
round the  historic  Christ  be  handled  on  such  congenial 
and  fertile  lines.  The  ethical  notion  of  the  true  unity  as 
the  interpenetration  of  persons  by  moral  action  must  take 
the  place  of  the  old  metaphysic  of  the  union  of  natures  by 
a  tour  de  force.  Unity  of  being  need  not  be  denied,  but 
it  will  be  approached  and  construed  on  those  ethical 
lines  which  alone  consist  with  personal  relation  and 
explain  it.  The  Church  has  worked  long  on  the  old 
lines  which  were  laid  down  by  pagan  thought  rather 
than  by  a  final  revelation  in  a  person  :  perhaps,  when  we 
have  worked  in  this  new  and  living  way  as  long,  then  we 
may  expect  results  for  which  we  are  not  yet  prepared  but 
which  we  can  already  forefeel  along  the  line  of  the  true 
method.  The  moral  and  experimental  method  in 
theology  will  give  us,  from  its  congeniality  with  the 
source  of  our  revelation  in  a  personal  Saviour,  results  as 
great  and  commanding  in  their  sphere  as  did  the  applica- 
tion of  the  other  experimental  method  of  induction  so 
appropriate  to  natural  science. 

§  §         § 


232  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

Taking  this  moral  method  we  seem  shut  up  to  one  of 
two  theories.  If  the  incarnation  was  the  result  rather 
than  the  cause  of  Christ's  moral  action  then  it  was  the 
result  either  of  a  great  and  creative  moral  decision  of  his 
before  he  entered  the  world — which  preserves  his  pre- 
existence,  and  seems  to  require  some  form  of  kenosis.  Or 
else  it  was  the  result  of  the  continuous  and  ascending 
moral  action  in  his  historic  life, wherein  his  moral  growth, 
always  in  unbroken  union  with  God,  gave  but  growing 
effect  to  God's  indwelling ;  while  the  final  and  absolute 
union  took  place  when  his  perfect  self-sacrifice  in  death 
completed  his  personal  development,  and  finally  identified 
him  with  God.  So  that  we  then  have  a  progressive 
incarnation  of  God  and  a  progressive  deification  of  man 
in  a  rising  scale  of  mutual  involution ;  which  requires 
some  form  of  adoptionism. 

In  either  of  these  cases  everything  turns  on   moral 
action   (either  in   the  world  or  before  it),  whose  historic 
consummation    was    in    the  cross   and    its   redemption. 
Either   the  cross  was  the  nadir  of  that  self-limitation 
which  flowed  from   the  supramundane  self-emptying  of 
the  Son,   or  it  was  the  zenith  of  that  moral  exaltation 
which  had  been  mounting  throughout  the  long  sacrifice 
of  his  earthly  life,  it  was  the  consummation  of  the  pro- 
gressive union  of  his  soul  and  God.      I  do  not  see  why 
we  may  not  combine  the  two  movements,  as  I  shall  hope 
to  show.      But  in  either  case  the  supreme  moral  act  of 
the  cross  is  the  key  to  the  nature  of  the  process.      There 
the  new  moral  value  was  really  introduced  into  Humanity, 
and  if  the  incarnation  did  not  take  place  for  that  purpose 
it  has  no  sense  or  end.      The  new  element  was  intro- 
duced, it  was  not  evolved.      An  evolutionary  incarnation 
is  none  ;    it  is  but  blossom.      The  element  of  miracle 


VIII.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  233 

must  be  there.  And  it  was  introduced  by  a  moral 
miracle  and  not  a  magical,  a  miracle  corresponding  to 
the  nature  of  moral  freedom.  A  moral  end  can  only  be 
reached  by  moral  means ;  and  if  the  nature  and  end  of 
redemption  be  moral  it  means  that  the  incarnation  which 
made  it  possible  must  be  moral  in  its  nature  toOi  No 
moral  redemption  would  be  possible  if  the  God  who  came 
to  do  it  did  not  assume  his  manhood  by  a  moral  miracle, 
a  miracle  of  grace,  as  real  as  that  which  finished  it.  If 
Christ  began  from  a  magical  act,  a  prodigious  act,  a 
mere  exercise  of  power,  as  I  have  said  the  dogma*  makes 
him  do,  and  if  emphasis  is  removed  from  the  atonement  to 
such  an  incarnation,  as  Catholicism  tends  to  do,  then  it  is 
very  hard  to  give  real  moral  effect  to  his  closing  work. 
And  history  has  shown  how  hard  it  is.  Popular  thought 
at  least  is  diverted  from  the  cross  to  the  cradle.  Evan- 
gelical belief,  and  especially  Catholic  belief,  has  had 
many  unsatisfactory  ethical  results.  Ecclesiastical  ethic 
is  not  always  Christian  ethic  (to  say  the  least).  And  the 
reason  lies  to  a  great  extent  in  the  incongruity  between 
the  moral  nature  of  the  Church's  Redemption  and  the 
non-moral  nature  of  the  Incarnation  which  was  offered 
to  explain  it.  Since  the  incarnation  lay  interior  and 
fontal  to  the  redemption,  its  metaphysical  nature  over- 
bore the  moral  action  of  redemption,  and  much  was 
pardoned  to  the  conscience  of  a  man  who  assented  to 
the  dogma.  It  is  often  urged  among  ourselves  that  the 
evangelical  construction  of  Christ's  death  as  atonement 
is  not  as  prolific  as  it  should  be  of  moral  results — nay 
that  a  certain  moral  obtuseness  has  too  often  gone  with 

*I  might  here  beg  that  the  dififcrencc  be  not  overlooked  between  the 
dynamic  union  of  the  two  natures  (of  whicli  I  fiave  spoken  and  which  I 
liave  chiefly  here  in  view)  and  the  miraculous  birth. 


234  ^^^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

evangelical  orthodoxy  and  zeal.  That  is  not  to  be 
roundb'  denied.  In  many  quarters  it  is  throwing  men 
of  the  better  (but  hastier)  sort  upon  a  non-evangelical 
Christianity.  And  the  reason  is  that  the  atonement 
at  the  Church's  centre  is  not  conceived  in  truly  ethical 
terms.  It  is  not  grasped  as  the  focus  and  spring  of  all  the 
divinest  ethic  of  the  conscience,  and  therefore  of  the  world. 
And  the  reason  why  it  is  not  so  grasped  is  that  its  truly 
moral  and  evangelical  interpretation,  as  adjusting  the 
conscience  directly  with  a  perfectly  holy  God,  has  been 
alloyed  with  mediaeval.  Catholic,  and  dynamic  notions  of 
incarnation.  These  being  more  metaphysical  than 
moral,  arrest  its  ethical  effect,  and  divide  the  unity  of  the 
divine  action  in  Christ.  The  Reformers,  with  all  their 
new  departure  in  the  religion  of  Redemption  and  Justifi- 
cation, took  over  the  substance  of  the  old  theology  about 
the  divine  nature  that  gave  Christ  His  redeeming  power. 
With  all  their  moralising  of  the  close  of  Christ's  life  they 
did  not  duly  moralise  its  beginning,  or  the  heavenly  act 
which  preceded  and  prescribed  its  beginning.  And  so 
we  have  a  paralysing  division  down  the  middle  of  the 
divine  action  in  Christ.  We  have  the  ethical  effect  of 
Christ  on  man  crossed  by  an  initiative  on  God's  side, 
when  Christ  left  heaven,  which  was  more  metaphysical 
or  miraculous  than  it  was  moral.  And  the  two  disparate 
things  much  confuse  that  general  Christian  mind,  or 
ethos,  from  which,  more  than  from  individual  conviction, 
so  much  of  our  Christian  ethic  proceeds.  Christ  could 
only  redeem  into  God's  holiness  if  it  were  from  the  act 
of  that  holiness  that  he  came :  he  could  only  create  a 
holy  ethic  if  it  was  in  the  holiest  of  acts  that  his  creative 
life  and  work  arose.  The  moral  problem  set  in  our  need 
of  salvation  can  only  be  solved  by  a  moral  movement  in 


VIII,]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  235 

the  God  who  undertook  it.     A  redemptive  work  is  moral 
or  nothing.     But  if  its  first  condition  is  an  incarnation 
made  possible  only  by  such  an  act  of  power  as  underlies 
the  union  of  natures  into  a  composite  person,    then  the 
redemption  is  unreal.     It  is  a  phantasmagory.     If  it  was 
the  mere  possession  of  a  divine  nature  and  a  rank  worthy 
to  atone  that  gave  Christ  His  saving  power,  if  it  was  not 
the  moral  quality  of  his  action  in  the  doing  of  it  (either 
on  earth,  or  in  heaven  before  coming  to  earth),  then  his 
work  has  a  moral  discount  which  is  bound  to  reduce  the 
value   of   its    practical   effect,    if  not   to  turn    it   to  an 
unreality.       If  his  conquest  of  our  moral  weakness  was 
not  a  victory  of  his  own   moral  strength,  but  merely  the 
power  or  strategy  of  a  Miltonic  omnipotence  getting  the 
better  of  the  prince  of  this  world,  can  we  wonder  that 
the  moral  effect  on  us  of  such  a  trial  of  strength  between 
two  giants  is  qualified  ?      Theories  of  incarnation  which 
make  all  turn  on  the  natural  omnipotence  or  omniscience 
of  the  Redeemer  are  beside   the  mark.     It  was  not  the 
rank    or    power   of  the  Redeemer  that  made  his  death 
precious    for   redemption,    but    his   worth.       It   was  his 
moral  value  as  the  Holy  that  gave  him  power,  both  with 
God  and   man,  to  prevail.       It   was  his  holiness,   with 
which    the    Holy    Father    was    perfectly    pleased    and 
satisfied.     That  is  the  only  Christian  doctrine  of  satis- 
faction.    If  the  incarnation  was  not  above  all  things  a 
moral  achievement  by  God  the  redemption  cannot  be  a 
moral  conquest  of  man.     The  divine  coming  and  action  is 
then  magic,  however  exalted  or  massive.     And  revelation 
becomes  not  the  self-donation  of  God  in  sacrifice,  but  a 
phantasmagory,  a  transparency,  a  placard  (Gal. iii.i), which 
leaves  the  conscience  untouched,  though  it  may  move  the 
imagination  to  the  most  magnificent  ritual  in  the  world, 
and  the  intellect  to  the  most  architectonic  orthodoxy. 


LECTURE    IX 

THE  MORALISING  OF  DOGMA,  ILLUSTRATED 
BY   THE   ABSOLUTENESS    OF   CHRIST 


LECTURE    IX 

THE    MORALISING   OF   DOGMA,    ILLUSTRATED    BY   THE 
ABSOLUTENESS   OF   CHRIST 

I  HAVE  been  speaking  of  the  moralising  of  dogma. 
I  applied  that  method  by  saying  that  the  cross  of  our 
redemption  was  the  historic  origin  of  the  theology  of 
the  incarnation  ;  that  by  the  cross  also  it  passes 
back  from  a  theological  conviction  to  a  life  experi- 
ence ;  and  that  the  practical  value  of  the  incarnation 
lies  in  its  being  the  necessary  foundation  of  the  cross. 
It  is  when  we  are  remade  at  the  cross  that  our 
eyes  are  opened  to  see  at  its  base  the  door  and  the 
stair  that  lead  down  to  the  incarnation  at  the  founda- 
tion of  our  moral  world.  Christ's  self-consciousness  of 
His  own  divine  nature  must  (I  have  said)  be  very 
powerful  for  our  theological  conviction.  The  value  of 
the  apostolic  inspiration,  (I  have  added),  cannot  be 
much  less  for  the  same  purpose.  But  it  is  the  new 
creation  in  the  cross  that  translates  the  belief  into 
spiritual  life,  and  indeed  makes  that  life,  by  making 
Christ  the  element  of  our  own  final  spiritual  conscious- 
ness. I  would  now  farther  illustrate  the  moralising  of 
dogma,  first  in  regard  to  theological  dogma,  by  con- 
tinuing to    dwell    on    the    cross    as    the    avenue  to    the 

330 


240  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

incarnation  and  the  incarnation  as  the  foundation  of 
the  cross ;  and  second,  in  regard  to  philosophic  dogma, 
by  translating  the  doctrine  of  the  absolute  into  the 
terms  of  religious  experience. 

§         §         § 

It  does    not   matter  what   happens   to  any  creeds  or 

orthodoxies  on  this  subject,  if  we  but  get  at  the  truth. 
Let  us  not  resolve  beforehand  that  it  is  impossible  to 
modify  the  old  confessions,  or  to  resume,  after  a  slack 
interval,  the  long  movement  of  the  Church's  thought 
to  pierce  and  clarify  the  mystery  of  godliness  in  Christ. 
Let  the  doctrine  be  reconstructed,  reinterpreted,  re- 
stated— what  you  will.  Provided  two  things.  First  that 
the  task  be  publicly  essayed  by  competent  and  reverent 
people  and  not  by  amateurs,  with  but  a  natural  religion 
and  a  poor  education  or  none  on  the  subject;  for  the 
worst  heresy  is  quackery.  Indeed,  the  work  can  really 
be  done  only  by  the  collective  Church  in  earnest  faith, 
working  on  the  contributions  of  individuals  intellectually 
equipped  and  morally  serious.  And,  second,  provided 
that  what  is  aimed  at  is  religious  truth,  which  is  so 
much  more  than  the  results  of  severe  historical  criti- 
cism;  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus  and  not  about  Jesus;  truth 
which  is  the  Church's  supernatural  faith  giving  a 
rational  account  of  itself;  the  truth  of  a  faith  which  is 
not  natural  religion,  but  an  invasion  of  the  natural 
man,  and  an  enclave  in  the  course  of  history ;  the  order 
of  truth  which  has  made  Christ  what  he  has  been  to 
the  Church  and  the  soul.  That  is  not  necessarily  the 
truth  exactly  as  the  Church  has  formulated  it,  the 
truth  as  stated  in  the  Church's  conception,  or  dogma  ; 
but  it  is  the  substantial,  distinctive,  and  evangelical  truth 
of  the  Church's  experience  ;  the  truth,  operative  however 


IX.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  241 

conceived,  which  has  made  Christ  for  his  Church  some- 
thing totally  different  from  what  Buddha  is  for  his  Church  ; 
the  truth  of  the  dogmas  in  distinction  from  the  dogmas 
as  true. 

§         §         § 

The  Church  has  always  held  fast  to  the  formula  about 
"  the  Eternal  Godhead  in  Jesus  Christ."  What  is 
under  that  phrase?  Surely  it  means  more  than  that  Jesus 
himself  was  but  a  unique  human  personality,  and  that 
the  divine  element  in  him  was  the  presence  or  Spirit 
of  the  Father,  dwelling  in  him  as  in  us,  only  more  so; 
to  whom  he  was  completely  sensitive;  with  whom  he 
was  filled,  in  the  affectional  sense  in  which  one  person- 
ality may  be  said  to  fill  another,  through  love's 
saturation  and  obsession  ? 

Does  the  Godhead  in  Christ  mean  only  that  the 
Father  was  in  the  closest  communion  of  affection  with 
Christ's  human  personality  ?  Or  does  it  not  mean  that 
the  personality  that  met  the  Father  so  completely  was 
itself  of  the  nature  of  Godhead,  and  always  had  been 
a  divine  vis-a-vis  to  the  personality  of  the  Father?  Only 
in  the  latter  case  should  we  really  speak  of  the  deity  of 
Christ ;  only  if  he  was  the  Ego  in  some  form  of  the 
Eternal  Son  ;  only  if  he  was  increate,  and  had  a  share 
which  God  could  delegate  to  no  creature  in  the  creation 
of  the  world,  a  share  in  the  world's  origin  as  real  as 
his  part  in  its  Redemption,  Reconciliation,  and  Con- 
summation. 

To  compare  great  things  with  small,  that  powerful 
genius  Emily  Bronte  makes  the  heroine  in  Wuthering 
Heights  to  say,  "  I  avi  Pleathcliffe.  He  is  always,  always 
in  my  mind  ;  not  as  a  pleasure,  any  more  than  I  am 
always  a  pleasure  to  myself ;  but  as  my  own  being."   Borne 


242  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

on  the  current  of  her  passion,  she  goes  on  to  say,  "  I 
love  him  because  he  is  more  myself  than  I  am.  What- 
ever our  souls  are  made  of,  his  and  mine  are  the  same." 
And  did  not  the  insight  of  the  Church  go  on  to  say  the 
like  sub  specie  eternitatis  of  the  Son's  relation  to  the 
Father  ?  Is  unity  of  being  not  the  postulate  of  a  love  so 
engrossing  and  complete  as  the  genius  of  the  Church's 
faith  realised  that  of  Father  and  Son  to  be  ?  It  is 
not  only  in  theology  that  passion  gravitates  to  meta- 
physic.  We  need  but  remember  also  Shakespeare's 
sonnets  and  minor  poems  to  feel  that. 

It  would  be  better  method  (and  better  ethic  as  well) 
if  we  confined  the  expression  "  Christ's  Godhead,  deity, 
or  even  divinity,"  to  the  more  thorough-going  idea. 
There  is  nothing  so  necessary  to  belief  and  its  moral 
purposes  as  more  clearness,  courage,  and  conscience  in 
deciding  what  we  mean  by  terms.  The  chief  plague 
and  heresy  of  the  hour  in  this  region  is  that  with  the 
popularising  of  religion  God  tends  to  become  the  most 
fluid  of  all  words.  The  prime  certainty  becomes  the 
great  haze.  The  living  God  becomes  but  as  the  ether 
of  life.  He  pervades,  but  he  does  not  purpose.  He 
saturates  all,  but  all  does  not  centre  in  him.  Discussion 
thus  becomes  impossible,  from  the  fact  that  the  intel- 
lectual conscience  grows  damp  and  limp  in  the  mist. 
Terms  become  so  liquid  that  they  run  into  any  mould, 
and  are  sometimes  no  more  tractable  than  a  cloud  that 
you  cannot  even  mould.  The  intellectual  ethic  of 
some  to-day  would  ruin  them  if  it  took  a  commercial 
instead  of  a  mental  form.  Clear,  strong  and  honest 
heresy  is  a  negative  contribution  to  clear  and  strong 
belief.  But  heresy  in  rolling  cloud  is  only  stifling, 
depressing,  and  demoralising. 


IX.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  243 

§         §         § 
The  Godhead  of  Christ  can  only  be  proved  religiously. 
Indeed,  the  only   true  confession   of  the   Incarnation  is 
living  faith.     It  can  only  be  based  on  what  is  involved  in 
the  idea,  the  experience,  of  God  that  proceeds  from  Jesus 
himself.     Is  He  necessary  to  the  being  of  the  God  He 
revealed  ?     If  we  do  not  regard  Jesus  and  his  full  gospel 
as  God's    supreme    revelation,  as  God's  ultimate  word, 
there  can    be    no  talk    of  his  Godhead.      If  we  do  not 
bring  all  other  religious  truth  to  this  test ;  if  we  place 
above   Christ's    word    those    ideas  of   God   which    we 
draw  from    the   world  of  nature  or    reason,  those  con- 
ceptions   of    Absoluteness,  Omnipotence,    and    the   rest 
which  would    be    called    common-sense  notions;    if  we 
take   from    these,    and    not    from    Jesus,    our  notion  of 
what  God   is — then  we  shall  very  likely  fail  in  proving 
bis    Godhead.      If  we  seek  in  Jesus  absolute  power,  in 
the    natural    sense    of    the    word,    we     shall   not   find 
it.     If  we    decree    beforehand  that    God  is  not  present 
where   omniscience    is    not  in    evidence    we    shall    drop 
the   question   about    Godhead    in    Jesus.     But   absolute 
Omnipotence    or    Omniscience    is   no   direct    part   of  a 
saving  revelation.     Absolute  power  and  authority  indeed 
belongs  to  Godhead,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  of  it,  it  is 
not  the  outgoing  element  in  it,  which  is  love.     And  an 
incarnation  may  be  possible  of  that  element  in  Godhead 
which  rather  represents  absolute  obedience,  and  absolute 
holiness   of  response.     That    element    of  subordination 
and  sacrifice  must  be  there  surely.     For  if  there  be  in 
Godhead  absolute  authority  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of  it 
without    thinking  of  absolute    obedience  as  there  also  ; 
unless  the  obedience  cease    to    be   correlative  with    the 
authority,  unless  authority  once  existed  without  obedi- 


244  ^^**  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

ence,  unless  there  could  be  an  Eternal  Father  with  but 
a  temporary  son,  unless  obedience  be  an  undivine  thing, 
and  the  only  divine  thing  is  to  lord  it,  and  to  wrap  one's 
self  in  conscious  power  with  no  outgoing  love.  And 
then  where  is  our  Christian  ethic,  or  the  real  divineness 
of  humility?  And  then  why  should  Nietzsche  not  be  the 
true  prophet,  and  a  dens  humilis  a  mere  figment  fostered 
by  the  weak  majority  to  strengthen  their  case  and  better 
their  lot  ? 

The  self-consciousness  of  Jesus  I  have  indicated  as 
being  of  immense  value  here ;  but  how  do  we  know 
that  his  God  was  not  a  figure  in  the  window  and 
his  Father  his  dream  ?  His  self-consciousness  taken 
alone  is  only  a  historic  datum.  We  must  have  some- 
thing that  turns  that  past  to  our  perpetual  present.  We 
must  have  the  Lord,  the  Spirit.  To  the  evangelical 
experience,  that  Jesus  becomes  our  present  Saviour ;  and 
such  a  Christ,  who  has  become  our  experienced  Salvation, 
is  certainly  involved  in  his  own  God.  Christ  can  only 
save  if  we  have  God  saving  in  him.  A  theology  of 
incarnation  must  be  a  theology  of  the  saved.  The 
fulcrum  of  any  vital  doctrine  about  the  person  of  Christ 
must  be  an  experimental  faith  in  him  as  Redeemer. 
Christ  is  very  God  to  me  because,  and  only  because, 
he  has  been  God's  saving  grace  to  me  a  sinner ;  He 
has  not  simply  preached  it,  or  brought  it.  We  cannot 
convince  the  man  in  the  street  that  Jesus  is  God,  nor 
the  man  that  feeds  his  soul  on  modern  culture.  We  do 
not  go  to  the  world  of  the  hearty,  alert,  interesting, 
rational  man,  even  when  he  has  developed  some  religious 
attention  and  some  theological  curiosity ;  we  do  not  go 
to  the  ordinary  able  man  and  propose  to  convince  him  by 
argument,  consecutive,  cumulative,  or  convergent,  that 


nc]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  245 

Jesus  was  God.  That  would  be  to  attempt  the  im- 
possible. It  would  mean  that  we  could  have  no  real 
faith  in  a  moral  atonement  till  we  were  first  convinced 
of  a  rational  incarnation.  And  it  would  mean,  as  I 
have  said,  that  we  set  about  proving  that  Jesus 
possessed  the  qualities  which  the  natural  man  of 
common-sense,  or  of  common-sense  organised  into  a 
philosophy,  associates  with  the  idea  of  God — a  supreme 
Being,  all-knowing,  all-present,  all-blessing,  capable  of 
all  prodigies.  No  such  attempt  could  succeed.  Indeed 
it  can  easily  seem  absurd.  And  apart  from  the  in- 
congruity of  attaching  these  qualities  to  a  historic 
personality,  no  such  claim  is  made  in  the  New  Testament. 
It  does  not  offer  an  omnipotent  Christ  or  an  intellectual 
paragon.  Its  appeal  is  not  to  the  average  rational  man. 
That  would  be  a  legalist  and  not  a  gospel  appeal.  To 
reject  the  New  Testament  appeal  is  not  stupid,  not 
irrational,  as  the  cheap  apologists  are  prone  to  say. 
The  appeal  is  not  made  to  the  shrewd  and  logical ;  it  is 
made  to  the  heart  and  conscience  in  a  real  experience  ; 
and  to  neither  of  these  acting  normally,  but  to  an 
abnormal  and  concerned  condition  of  both.  It  is  made 
to  men  created  for  love  who  yet  do  not  or  cannot  love, 
to  men  created  for  goodness  who  are  in  sin,  and  who  are 
either  uneasy  or  miserable  in  it,  or  too  lost  to  be  either. 
The  need  to  which  Christianity  appeals  is  the  need  of 
the  conscience,  its  supreme  need  of  grace  from  the  God 
whose  holiness  troubles  its  days  or  oppresses  its  nights. 
And  the  first  condition  to  be  satisfied  by  any  doctrine 
about  Christ's  person  is  that  it  shall  be  necessary  to  the 
central  principle  of  Christianity  that  "  in  Christ  we  have 
a  gracious  God."     Not  that  we  have  such  a  God  through 

Christ,  but  that  in  having  Christ  we  have  Him.     That 
s 


246  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

is  the  marrow  of  Christianit}^  running  through  Paul, 
Athanasius,  Anselm,  Luther,  Schleiermacher,  Wesley, 
and  indeed  all  the  great  evangelic  and  apostolic  succes- 
sion. The  sum  of  a  religion  of  commandment,  of  a  legal 
religion,  may  be  the  mere  love  of  God  and  love  of  man.  But 
Christianity  is  not  a  legal  religion,  and  such  love,  though 
not  far  from  the  Kingdom,  was  yet  outside  it  (Mk.  xii.  34). 
There  is  no  real  faith  in  the  Godhead  of  Christ  apart 
from  the  evangelical  experience  of  God's  gracious  love 
of  us.  And  that  experience  has  always  required  behind 
it,  for  its  full  force,  a  real  incarnation.  The  pre-existence 
of  the  Son  of  God  who  became  incarnate  in  Jesus  has 
always  been  considered  requisite  for  the  evangelical 
faith  of  the  Church,  the  faith  that  God  in  the  cross 
really  forgave  and  saved,  and  that  he  was  not  merely 
believed  and  declared  to  have  done  so,  even  by  the 
greatest  of  all  prophets  and  the  holiest  of  all  saints, 
Jesus.  We  should  be  clear  about  the  issue.  Even  a 
Roman  Church  that  worships  Christ,  has  a  social  and  a 
spiritual  future  denied  to  a  rational  creed  that  but 
admires  and  honours  Him.  Christianity  is  either 
Evangelical  or  Socinian  at  last.  And  if  it  is  not  the 
latter  it  must  stand  on  the  fact  that  the  God  we  sinned 
against  was  in  Christ,  really  forgiving  the  sinner  at  first 
hand,  that  Godhead  was  actually  living  in  Christ  and 
reconciling — not  sending,  visiting,  moving,  or  inspiring 
Christ,  but  living  in  Him  and  constituting  Him. 
Certainly  more  than  inspiring  Him,  for  it  is  a  poor 
response  to  the  history  to  think  of  Christ  simply  as 
inspired,  or  visited  by  a  Spirit  which  came  and  went. 
And  I  have  tried  to  show  that  we  cannot  think  of  Him 
adequately  as  tenanted  by  the  Spirit,  even  in  an  abiding 
way — as  a  created  personality  quite   filled,  and  always 


IX.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  z^y 

filled,  with  the  influence  of  the  Spirit,  always  and  per- 
fectly answering  the  Spirit.  We  may  of  course  reject 
the  apostolic  interpretation  and  follow  a  different  line 
from  the  New  Testament.  And  we  may  justify  ourselves 
in  doing  so  by  various  considerations — when  we  do 
consider.  But  if  we  follow  the  New  Testament  as  a 
whole  and  as  a  Gospel,  we  must  think  of  the  divine 
element  as  constituting  the  historic  personality;  and  we 
must  think  of  Christ's  earthly  life  itself,  with  all  its 
passion  and  choice,  as  due  to  a  great  and  critical  volition 
of  the  same  will  in  a  heavenly  state.  That  is  a  view 
essential  to  apostolic  Christianity,  and  one  of  the  facts 
which  it  believes  to  be  of  first  necessity  for  the  redeeming 
work  which  is  Christianity,  and  which  created  the 
Church.  In  the  Bible  men  are  preoccupied  with  the 
reality  of  an  incarnation  whereof  all  the  pagan  ideas 
and  legends  about  gods  descending  and  walking  the 
earth  were  but  presentiments,  adumbrations,  prophecies, 
and  even  prayers  for  it.  Those  Judaistic  notions  of 
Messiah,  Redemption,  Expiation,  and  all  the  train  of 
ideas  which  the  religious  historical  school  use  to  dissolve 
Christianity  into  a  very  effective  syncretism,  were  really 
a  part  of  that  providential  prcparatio  cvangelica  which 
fell  into  place  and  found  itself  in  Christ. 

So,  when  we  base  our  belief  in  the  Incarnation  on  the 
Evangelical  experience  that  is  a  case  of  the  moralising 
of  dogma  in  the  theological  plane. 

§         §         § 
I    wish    now  to    illustrate  the    process   of  moralising 

dogma    by  applying  it   in  the  Christological   interest   to 

another  dogma  than  omnipotence,  the  philosophic  dogma 

of  the  Absolute.* 

*  For  the  moralisinR  of  such  a  doctrine  as  Atonement  may  I  refer  to  my 
little  book  The  Cruciality  oj  the  Cross  (] ladder  &  Stoughton,  1909),  and 
especially  its  last  part. 


248  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

What  is  most  keenly  discussed  in  many  cultured  circles 
at  present  is  the  Absoluteness  of  Christianity.  What  does 
that  really  mean  ?  Has  it  any  meaning  for  the  Church  and 
its  preachers  ?  It  does  not,  cannot,  mean  that  a  philoso- 
phical Absolute  can  be  proved  by  the  Christian  revelation 
in  a  systematic  way  which  compels  theoretic  conviction. 
It  does  not  mean  that  Christian  theologians  profess  to  have 
solved  the  problem  in  which  Hegel  failed.  They  have  in- 
deed a  solution  to  the  world  ;  but  not  to  the  same  version 
of  its  question  as  the  philosophers  put.  The  idea  of  the 
Absolute  has  for  us  not  a  philosophic  but  a  religious, 
practical,  experimental  value.  It  really  means,  in  more 
familiar  language,  the  finality  of  Christ  for  the  experience 
of  life  and  reality — the  soul's  last  reality.  That  is  the 
form  which  the  truth  of  the  incarnation  assumes  in  face 
of  the  challenge  that  marks  the  present  day.  The  insight 
this  luminous  age  lacks  is  insight  into  the  greatest  moral 
fact  of  history — into  Christ.  What  we  need,  what 
preachers  of  all  men  need,  is  not  so  much  affection  to 
Christ  but  insight  into  Christ.  That  is  the  Church's 
need,  however  it  may  be  with  individuals.  It  is  not 
impression  but  inspiration.  Christianity  must  stand  or 
fall  by  an  insight  which  discerns  the  finality  of  Christ 
as  to  life  and  its  destiny.  And,  from  what  I  have  already 
said  as  to  the  place  and  function  of  the  cross,  you  will 
not  be  surprised  if  I  say  now  that  this  finality  of  Christ  is 
the  same  thing  as  used  to  be  described  as  his  "  finished 
work,"  his  transfer  of  Humanity,  for  good  and  all,  from 
death  to  life  in  relation  to  God.  It  is  always  the  cross 
that  is  the  offence  to  the  world.  It  may  be  the 
philosophic  world  of  Hegel  with  its  Absolute;  or  the 
"gothic"  world  of  Nietzsche,  Henley,  Shaw,  Kipling, 
Davidson  or  Wells  with  its  superman,  its  assertion  of  the 


IX.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  249 

individual  and  his  instincts,  its  cult  of  the  violent  life, 
and  its  protest  against  humility,  sacrifice,  poverty, 
chastity,  or  obedience.  Or  it  may  arrest  the  natural 
healthy  world  of  comfort  and  success.  The  only  authori- 
tative ethic  in  the  face  of  these  egoisms  and  subjectiv- 
isms is  one  that  is  based  on  the  finality  of  the 
historic  Christ  and  his  redemption.  We  are  in  a  world 
which  has  been  redeemed;  and  not  in  one  which  is  being 
redeemed  at  a  pace  varying  with  the  world's  thought  and 
progress,  or  the  Churches'  thought  and  work.  To  believe 
that  the  kingdom  has  come  is  another  religion  from  the 
belief  that  it  is  but  coming  and  that  we  have  to  bring  it. 
It  produces  a  totally  different  type  of  faith  and  life.  And 
it  is  the  only  type  that  can  save  Christianity  from  being 
politicised,  socialised,  and  secularised  out  of  existence. 
And  I  would  say  three  things  about  this  belief,  of  which 
that  matter  of  experience  is  the  first." 

§  §  § 
(i)  For  Christianity  the  Absolute  is  not  in  an  idea  but 
in  an  experience.  It  is  a  layman's  matter.  It  is  the  very 
soul  of  our  universal  faith.  It  is  the  affair  of  every  man, 
if  his  eternal  soul  is  worth  more  than  all  the  relative 
world.  It  has  little  directly  to  do  with  the  results  of 
speculation  or  of  comparative  religion.  Our  absolute  is 
not  the  last  common  summit  of  all  thought;  for  we  do 
not  rally  about  a  minimal  point  of  light  that  shines  dear  in 
the  sky  for  all  quarters,  like  the  pole-star  for  the  sea,  or  the 
shining  Fusiyama  for  Japan.  Not  is  it  the  least  common 
denominator  of  all  faiths  ;  for  we  are  not  united  most  by 
the  thin  thread  of  belief  which  divides  us  least.  Of 
course,  a  philosophic  Absolute  cannot  be  out  of  relation 

*  See  Hunziger  ProbUme,  p.  79,  for  much  that  follows. 


250  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

to  the  Christian  God  ;  and  there  is  a  metaphysic  of  faith  ; 
but  it  is  not  the  Gospel  that  Christianity  brings,  nor  the 
claim  it  makes.  The  Gospel  does  not  say  that  all  reli- 
gions are  right  with  their  claim  to  be  absolute,  right  in 
the  sense  that  they  all  bring  us  to  contact  with  the 
Absolute  in  differing  degrees,  though  none  finally — not 
even  Christianity.  That  relativism  rests  on  a  conception 
of  the  Absolute  somewhat  abstract  and  formal — too  much 
so  for  the  faith  of  a  living  and  eternal  soul,  or  for  its 
trust  of  itself  to  a  living  and  eternal  God.  The  Chris- 
tian claim  to  absoluteness  is  a  thing  of  more  depth, 
breadth,  and  volume  than  that — more  simple,  vital,  and 
passionate.  It  has  more  flesh,  blood,  content  and  con- 
science. For,  among  faiths,  there  is  in  Christianity  a 
difference  which  is  qualitative  and  not  merely  gradual,  a 
difference  in  kind  and  not  in  degree  only.  Christianity 
does  bring  us  into  contact  with  the  Absolute  God — like 
other  religions;  but  (if  the  phrase  were  allowed)  it  does 
so  absolutely  and  finally.  The  other  religions  had  a  real 
message ;  Christianity  has  something  beyond  a  message 
more  real  still.  They  all  told  us  truth  with  whatever 
error  ;  Christianity  goes  beyond  a  gift  of  more  truth  and 
less  error.  Christianity  takes  us  out  of  the  formal  region 
of  truths  more  or  less  true;  it  takes  us  out  of  the  region 
even  of  absolute  truth,  truth  absolutely  true,  out  of 
mere  theology.  Its  revelation  is  the  gift  of  a  true 
God,  not  of  truth  about  God.  So  long  as  truth  is 
propositional  or  formal,  so  long  as  it  is  any  kind  of 
statement,  however  exalted  and  kindled,  about  God, 
it  is  below  the  kind  of  absolute  that  the  soul  re- 
quires, that  life  requires,  that  the  world  requires. 
Christianity  gives  us  a  new  and  absolute  life,  an  absolute, 
not  in  form  or  truth,  but  in  content  and  experience.     It 


IX.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  251 

does  not  give  us  anything  about  God,  but  it  gives  God 
Himself — the  living  God  to  living  men.  Its  revelation  is 
not  doctrinal  but  sacramental.  And  in  its  light — in  its 
psychology  if  you  will — we  can  interpret  all  other  faiths. 
We  then  see  that  the  vital  thing  in  every  religion  is  not  an 
innate  evolutionary  movement  towards  an  absolute  God, 
but  the  absolute  God  breaking  in  upon  the  spiritual  con- 
sciousness, breaking  up  through  it  in  essential  miracle. 
The  foundation  of  the  whole  world  emerges  in  the  moral 
and  religious  life  of  the  soul,  takes  command,  and  anchors 
us  upon  something  which  Eternity  cannot  shake.  For 
this  is  Eternity. 

§  §  § 
(2)  For  the  absoluteness  of  Christianity  lies  in  an  ex- 
perience of  the  historic  and  most  human  Christ  as  a 
superhuman  visitant,  and  as  the  one  moral  mediator  of 
personal  communion  with  the  living,  and  holy,  and  eternal 
God.  It  is  an  experience  of  Christ  as  the  absolute  con- 
science, i.e.,  as  the  judge  of  all,  and  as  the  Redeemer, 
i.e.,  the  saving  health  of  all — in  a  word,  as  the  God  of 
all.  It  means  that  the  person  and  work  of  Christ  alone 
gives  the  moral  soul  to  itself.  He  does  for  us  the  ultimate 
thing  of  the  soul,  its  one  thing  needful.  He  gives  it  its 
own  ".ternal  place  and  communion  with  an  absolutely  holy 
God.  God  is  the  only  world  in  which  the  soul  can  find 
itself.  Christ  gives  us  our  God  and  our  soul  at  once. 
God  finds  us  and  we  find  God.  In  Christ  the  end  of  all 
makes  himself  in  his  love  the  means  to  that  end.  What 
is  there  to  be  done  beyond  that,  when  that  is  done  on 
the  scale  of  the  race  ?  To  be  in  living,  loving,  holy 
communion  with  the  living,  loving,  holy  God  for  ever 
is  the  soul's  perfect  consummation  and  final  bliss. 
And   that   is    Christ's   gift.       What  do  we    want,    what 


252  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lbct. 

can  we  conceive,  in  any  farther  revelation  ?  We  are 
here  at  a  finality  and  its  rest.  Endless  discovery,  of 
course,  remains,  endless  explication  within  the  gift  un- 
speakable ;  but  in  the  way  of  revelation  what  more  is  pos- 
sible than  that  God  should  in  his  love  give  Himself  to  man 
completely,  though  not  at  any  point  exhaustively  ?  What 
more  can  we  pray  than  that  He  should  give  us  his  whole 
and  holy  self,  and  so  bring  us  to  our  true  and  whole  self? 
And  this  in  Christ,  to  the  classic  religious  experience 
of  the  race,  He  has  done.  The  point,  you  perceive,  is 
not  that  this  is  what  a  final  revelation  would  do  if  we  had 
reached  it,  but  that  this  is  what  God  in  Christ  has  done 
and  does.  That  is  the  real  issue  of  the  hour.  Not,  Is 
Christ  a  revelation  of  God  ?  but,  Is  he  the  revelation, 
the  final  and  complete  revelation,  of  which  all  that  we 
may  call  revelation  besides  is  but  a  factor?  Most  whom 
we  need  here  consider  admit  that  Christ  is  a  revelation 
of  God ;  but  all  do  not  admit  that  he  is  the  final  revela- 
tion, that  we  have  in  him  God  Himself,  and  the  whole 
Eternal  God,  with  His  last  word,  with  man's  last 
judgment,  his  last  justification,  his  last  destiny.  This 
is  a  matter  which  cannot  be  settled  by  proofs  or  evi- 
dences of  Christ's  deity,  but  only  by  experience — the 
soul's  experience  of  eternal  Redemption  in  a  Church 
of  souls.  There  is  no  basis  for  a  belief  in  the  Incarna- 
tion but  this  basis  of  faith.  Nor  is  there  any  other  basis 
for  certainty  of  the  world's  final  good.  The  poet  trusts 
that  somehow  good  will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill;  the 
believer  knows  that  this  is  how  it  must  be  so,  for  so  it  is. 

§         §         § 
(3)  The  final  thing,  the  Absolute,  in  Christianity  is  the 
experience  not  simply  of  contact  with  Christ,  not  simply 
of  a  revelation  given,  nor  even  of  a  deliverance  wrought. 


IX.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  253 

but  of  a  new  creation  effected  in  Christ.  The  Son  is  as 
creative  as  the  Father.  What  he  brings  is  not  a  revela- 
tion which  can  be  tested  by  the  formal  tests  of  truth,  and 
called  final  by  its  coincidence  with  a  final  philosophy — 
a  philosophy  of  the  Absolute.  That  was  the  dangerous 
method  of  the  early  Apologists.  It  was  a  dream  which 
misled  many  a  century  ago  to  think  that  Hegel's 
philosophy,  as  the  last  word  of  thought,  had  counter- 
signed for  the  moderns  Christ's  revelation  as  the  word 
of  God ;  with  such  a  reference  the  Gospel  was  good  for 
any  amount  for  which  we  might  draw  on  it.  But  the  final 
thing  in  Christianity  is  an  experience  in  which  Christ  is 
not  simply  the  ideal  nor  the  channel,  but  the  creator  of 
the  new  man.  He  is  the  real  principal,  and  not  a  mere 
intermediary.  In  his  person  we  have  the  permanent 
divine  ground  of  our  communion  with  God,  and  not 
merely  its  divine  agent  once.  The  work  of  Christ  is  the 
work  of  a  Christ  eternally  working  for  us.  If  we  are 
brought  to  God  by  the  historic  Christ  we  go  on  to  find 
that  we  remain  in  God  only  as  we  abide  in  the  same 
Christ  as  the  Eternal  Son.  It  has  been  so  found  in  the 
history  of  the  Church.  It  is  on  the. ground  of  Christ 
that  we  are  forgiven,  daily  forgiven,  it  is  not  simply  by 
means  of  Christ.  He  is  not  the  ground  of  our  trust 
simply  but  of  our  salvation — not  an  Erkentnissgrund  but  a 
Rcalgrtind.  The  means  is  in  him  identical  with  the  end. 
He  is  God  dealing  with  men  directly,  though  mediatorily. 
Now  I  beg  you  here  not  to  say  such  words  are  meaning- 
less. That  they  are  not ;  for  the  thing  has  been  often 
said,  and  by  the  greatest.  And  no  one  is  entitled  to 
deny  it  till  he  has  grasped  the  meaning,  and  is  sure 
f  n  good  ground  it  is  wrong,  God  in  Christ  deals  with 
men   directly  but  mediatorily.     He  is  the  Mediator  and 


254  ^''^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

not  the  medium,  not  the  agent.  Buddha  was  a  divine 
agent.  Can  we  refuse  to  say  he  had  a  commission  from 
God  ?  But  Christ  is  the  offended  Holiness  itself  exer- 
cising forgiveness  and  salvation ;  and  doing  so  in  such  a 
way  as  to  set  up,  not  recognition,  not  belief,  not  welcome 
even,  but  communion — on  the  scale  of  the  race  and  of 
Eternity.  To  be  in  Christ  is  to  be  in  God.  He  is  not 
the  herald  of  God's  will  but  God's  will  in  action,  God's 
final  will  in  universal  action  on  me;  and  so  acting  on 
me  as  not  simply  to  impress  me  but  so  as  to  remake 
me,  and  thus  build  every  soul  into  an  everlasting  king- 
dom. It  is  not  a  new  mood,  or  a  new  conviction  he 
gives  me,  but  a  new  life,  an  Eternal  Life,  a  new  world,  my 
Eternity,  my  own  Eternity,  destined,  forfeit,  and  restored. 
There  is  nothing  more  left  for  God  to  give  man,  but  the 
appropriation,  in  experience  and  in  detail,  of  this  one  and 
final  gift  of  Himself  in  Christ  and  his  Eternal  Life.  For 
if  there  be  a  Mediator  in  this  sense  there  can  only  be  one. 
He  can  have  no  successor. 

§  §  § 
It  is  a  mighty  matter  to  have  to  do  with,  a  vast  venture 
and  committal  to  make,  when  we  put  our  soul  in 
Christ's  hands  for  God  and  for  Eternity,  and  when  we 
take  in  him  the  Almighty  and  Eternal  into  our  soul.  It 
is  a  step  for  good  and  all.  We  risk  all  we  have  on  that 
pearl.  We  sell  all  we  have  to  buy  it.  It  is  a  tremendous 
assertion  we  make  when  we  go  to  the  world  with  Christ. 
How  true  it  is  that  society  to  day  needs  nothing  so 
much  as  the  lost  sense  of  God  in  its  midst — holy, 
judging,  amazing,  terrifying,  comforting,  healing  us. 
There  are  those  who  while  they  feel  that  feel  it  so  poorly 
and  unworthily  that  they  think  it  can  be  recovered  by 
literature,  or  the  stage,  or  some  such  mop  for  the  Atlantic. 


IX.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  255 

But  is  there  anyway  to  set  God  in  the  midst  but  His  own 
way  of  setting  Christ  there  ?    It  is  a  tremendous  thing  to 
go  to  the  world  with  our  Christ,  and  to  many  a  pretty  wit 
a  thing  ridiculous  and  despicable.  1  do  not  wonder  people 
do  not  believe  us.     Christ  Himself  was  disbelieved,  and 
he  grows  credible  but  slowly.     I   cannot  myself  claim  to 
have  been  free  born  in  this  faith  ;  with  a  great  price  have 
I  procured  its  freedom.     I  have  envied  those  who  took 
naturally  and  sweetly  to  Christ — though  they  have  helped 
m.e  little.     And  I  should  count  a  life  well  spent,  and  the 
world  well  lost,  if,  after  tasting  all  its  experiences,  and 
facing  all  its  problems,   I  had  no  more  to  show  at  its 
close,  or  carry  with  me  to  another  life,  than  the  acquisi- 
tion of  a  real,   sure,   humble,    and  grateful  faith  in  the 
Eternal  and  Incarnate  Son  of  God.     All  is  still  well  if  the 
decay  of  everything  else  but  fertilise  the  knowledge  of  him 
(Phil.  iii.  8).     Only,  let  us  not  increase  the  difficulty  by 
misunderstanding.     It  is  indeed  a  tremendous  thing  to 
say   that   the    historic    Christ   outweighs  all  the  world, 
the  race,  its  possibilities  and  its  development.      Think  of 
the  range  of  history,  the  dimensions  of  the  Cosmos.    Tell 
over  in  your  imagination  the  whole  population  of  earth, 
past,  present,  and  to  come.     Conceive  what  it  is  when  we 
learn  that  it  would  take  an  express  train  114  millions  of 
years  to  the  nearest  star.     And  Christ  outweighs  all  that 
cosmic  greatness  !    It  is  beyond  flesh  and  blood  to  believe 
it.      But   do    not  let    us    misconceive  the   terms   of  the 
demand.       Do    not  let    us    succumb   to   mere    bigness. 
There  is    no    religion    in    an    infinite  merely    extended, 
but  only  in  an  absolutely  holy  love.     We  do  not  weigh 
Christ  against  a  numerical  race,  but  a  fallen.     And  we  do 
not  mean  that  Christ  was  as  the  end  of  all  development ; 
for   the    development    in    Christ    is  far  greater  than  the 


256  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

development  to  Him.  He  is  God's  seventh  and  last  day, 
in  which  we  men  for  ever  live  and  grow.  No  stage,  no  form 
is  final.  As  mere  history  Christianity  is  not  imperfectible. 
What  is  final  is  intra-historic,  super-historic.  That  is  the 
real  continuum.  It  is  Eternal  Life.  But  that  means  much 
more  than  an  indestructible  spiritual  energy  with  endless 
power  to  vary.  All  the  variations  are  on  a  fixed  theme. 
It  is  more  than  the  mere  spiritual  vitality  upon  which 
the  Catholic  Modernists  seem  to  stand  as  the  essence  of 
the  Church.  It  is  a  positive  work,  word,  and  message. 
It  is  not  the  vitality  of  the  Church  but  the  holy  will  of  God 
in  Christ.  The  Lord  is  the  Spirit.  God  is  Spirit.  Yes, 
but  a  cognisable  spirit  with  inalienable  features — a  Holy 
Spirit.  Christ  is  not  a  will  that  might  decree  anything, 
but  God's  holy  will  in  action  for  our  Salvation,  His  will 
as  His  saving  self,  His  will  as  Himself  and  not  a  function 
of  Himself. 

§         §         § 
What  is   meant   then    is   that   as    (in    Butler's   great 

saying)  "  morality  is  the  soul  of  things,"  with  Christ  we 

have  all   things  in    principle,   that   the   gift  is   for   ever 

compendious  and  insuperable.      It  means  that  the  gift, 

Christ,  has   a    supernatural    history    not    only   after   it, 

but  before  it  and  in  it;  that  it  is  an  eternal  act  and  deed 

in  a  historic  soul ;  that  it  has  in  it  the  final  power  not 

only    to    enter    history    mightily    but,    being   there,    to 

subdue    all    things    to    itself,    to    compel,    monopolise, 

and  consummate  history,  and  so   to  grow   to  the  goal 

latent  in  its  own  increate  beginning.      It  is  meant  that, 

as  in  creation  this  world    is  given  in  its  own  plane   of 

Time  once  for  all,  so,  on  the  second  and  eternal  plane, 

the  spiritual  and  heavenly  world  is  given  once  for  all  in 

the  New  Creation    in  Christ.     Christ  works  upon  man 


IX.]  The  Moralising  of  Dogma  257 

with    the    same  absolute  creative  power  as  the  Father 
does;   that  is  the    meaning  of  the  Godhead  of  Christ. 
We    do    not    indeed    attain    once    for    all,    but  we  are 
apprehended  once    for  all.      We  do  not  mean  that  our 
religion  is    final,    but    that    God's    revelation    is.      The 
religion  must  grow  ;  but  its  growth  is  in  the  power  of 
appropriating    its  own    finality — as   Christ    himself  did, 
in  becoming  what  he  always  was.     We  have  an  absolute 
revelation  but  not  an  absolute   religion.      We   have   in 
Christ  an  absolute  grace,  crucial  for  God,  which  we  meet 
with  an  appropriate  faith,  crucial  for  the  soul.    God's  gift 
is    the    Eternal  Act  ;  our    taking    or    refusmg  it   is  our 
eternal  doom.     It  is  the  issue  of  Eternal  Life  or  Death. 
Yet  we  only  gradually  become  conscious  how  final,  how 
crucial  for  Eternity,  the  faith  is  that  meets  a  grace  so 
free.     But  that  slowness  matters  less ;  because  it  is  our 
revelation  we  have  to  preach  and  not  our  religion,  it  is 
our  Christ  and  not   our  faith,   our  word    and   not   our 
sermons.     We   have   to  preach    God  and  not  advertise 
Him.     The  gospel  still  means  far  more  for  God  than  the 
martyrs  do;  and  the  redeeming  Christ  is  more  than  the 
confessing  Church.    In  Christ  we  have  the  whole  of  God, 
but  not  everything  about  God,  the  whole  heart  of  God  but 
not  the  whole  range  of  God.     We  have  the  final  kind  of 
God  but  not  the  final  compass  of  God,  the  kind  and  will  of 
God  that  history  cannot  supersede  ;  the  whole  counsel  of 
God  but  not  all  his  counsels  ;  all  God  but  not  yet  all  good. 
But  with  even  that  qualification  it  is  a  mighty  matter 
to  believe.     Magna  ars  est  conversari  cum  Deo.     It  is  the 
greatest  thing  in  the  world.    And  in  two  ways  it  is  this 
vital  thing.     It  is  vital  in  the  sense  of  being  a  matter  of 
life  and  experience.     And  it  is  vital  in  the  sense  of  being 
essential    to  the  life  of  Christianity   in    the    world,  and 
decisive  for  the  destiny  of  the  soul. 


LECTURE    X 
THE    PRE-EXISTENCE    OF    CHRIST 


LECTURE    X 


THE    PRE-EXISTENCE   OF   CHRIST 


To  explain  Christ  and  his  final  work  there  were  two 
ideas  current  in  the  early  Church — his  Virgin  Birth  and 
his  Pre-existence. 

It  is  possible,  of  course,  to  hold  both  of  these.  But 
the  temper  and  tendency  of  our  time  is  against  the  old 
emphasis  on  the  former,  especially  on  critical  grounds ; 
and  more  particularly  because  of  its  absence  in  cases 
where,  as  in  St.  Paul,  all  turns  on  the  uniqueness  of 
Christ's  nature  and  origin.  It  is  to  be  noted  also  that 
were  the  Virgin  birth  beyond  historic  criticism  it  might 
not  by  itself  give  us  a  pre-existent  Christ,  and  it  need 
not  give  us  more  than  an  Arian.  It  might  indicate  no 
more  than  a  supreme  son  of  God  created  then  or  before 
through  the  Holy  Ghost  for  the  special  purpose  of  a 
sinless  redemption. 

If,  however,  we  relax  the  emphasis  on  the  Virgin  Birth 
we  must  increase  it  upon  the  pre-existcnce,  as  St.  Paul 
did. 

And  we  are  the  more  moved  to  this  since,  while  Jesus 
makes  no  sort  of  reference  to  his  human  birth,  sat  very 
loose  to  family  ties,   and  rebuked,  and  even   renounced, 

a6i 


262  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jems  Christ         [lect. 

his  mother  in  a  way  (Mk.  iii.  21,  31)  hard  to  adjust  to 
the  current  hypothesis,  yet  it  is  difficult  to  remove  from 
him  entirely  all  reference  to  his  pre-existence.  Were 
these  ample  and  explicit,  of  course,  were  his  own  con- 
sciousness of  an  antenatal  life  put  beyond  doubt,  any 
difficulties  of  ours  would  be  quite  minor  as  to  how  such 
a  life  became  possible  in  human  conditions.  Questions 
as  to  the  psychology  of  the  kenotic  act  could  well  wait, 
if  we  were  perfectly  sure  from  such  a  source  as  Christ's 
own  words  about  its  reality. 

But  the  pre-existence  of  Jesus  is  one  of  those  points 
where,  in  the  present  state  of  opinion  about  the  fourth 
gospel,  modern  thought  is  apt  to  feel  insecure  from  lack  of 
express  data  and  from  distrust  of  theological  venture. 
Faith  is  too  timid  to-day  to  stray  far  from  the  shore  lights 
of  explicit  statement,  to  launch  out  into  the  deep  things  of 
God,  and  sail  by  observation  of  the  heavens.  It  asks, 
where  are  we  told  this  or  that  ?  Such  non-theological 
religion  can  do  but  a  coasting  trade.  You  have  the  same 
textual  habit  of  mind  both  in  the  hard  believers  and  the 
hard  critics.  A  verbal  Scripturalism  has  gone,  but  it  has 
given  way  to  another  kind,  which  has  not  ceased  to  be 
narrow  by  becoming  critical,  and  has  not  become  really 
liberal  just  by  ceasing  to  be  literal.  There  is  a  mental 
cramp,  and  certainly  an  imaginative,  which  too  easily 
besets  the  meticulous  scholar.  And  it  is  a  poor  exchange 
to  fall  out  of  the  hands  of  the  theologian,  narrow  as  his 
imagination  could  be,  into  those  of  the  critic,  narrow  as 
he  can  be  for  lack  of  any  imagination  at  all.  There  is 
an  amplitude  and  an  atmosphere  about  the  great  dogma- 
tists of  theology  which  is  absent  from  the  dogmatists 
of  research.  These  have  the  great  way  with  them. 
The  great    theologies  are  epics,    with  a  fascination   for 


X.]  The  Pre- existence  of  Christ  263 

Miltonic  minds.     In  their  sphere  they  have  the  scientific 
imagination    so    praised    by    Tyndall,    and    the   cosmic 
emotion  which  W.  K.  Clifford  pursued.     And  in  matters 
of  the  soul  it  is  better  to  have  the  dogma  of  the  tele- 
scope   than    that    of  the    microscope.       It    is  better   to 
have  the  dogma  of  Melanchthon,  or  even  Calvin,  than  of 
Wellhausen  or  Schmiedel  (whom  I  name  with  due  respect 
for  the  great  work  they  represent).     The  one   has    the 
positivity  of  infinite  revelation,  the  other  the  positivism 
of   the   present   age.     The  one  descends  from  the  great 
sky  like  a  bride  adorned,  the  other  struggles  from  the  dust, 
with  clipped  wings  and  short  strokes,  to  meet  a  Lord 
too  much  in  the  air.     Each  is  a  dogmatism ;  but  the  one 
dogmatism  represents,  in  forms  now  partly  obsolete,  the 
spacious  consciousness  of  a  whole  living  and  believing 
Church,  gathering  up  the  best  thought  of  its  age;  the 
other  betrays    the    straitened    and    esurient    air  of    a 
scientific  school  whose  thought  does  not  feed  its  soul. 
There  is  much  in  the  old  dogmatism  that  needs  correc- 
tion, and  there  is  much  in  the  new  mind  to  correct  it. 
But  how  much    needs    chastening  in    the  new  may   be 
exemplified  in    the  warped    and  rash    acumen  of  those 
critics  who  venture  to  assure   us,  for  instance,  that  it  is 
now  proved  that  Jesus  never  claimed  to  be  the  judge  of 
mankind.     And  this  is  done  in   face  of  the  patent  fact 
that  among  critics  quite  as  competent  there  is  an  equally 
decided  conviction  the  other  way.     In  several  such  cases 
we  feel  how  much  truth  there  is  in  the  observation  made 
by  a  liberal  theologian.     "  It  is    remarkable  how  often 
men  who  can  set  out  admirably  the  thought  of  the  past 
show   themselves  quite   incapable  of  understanding  the 
features  of  their  present."     The   scholar,   the  historian, 
submerges  the  thinker.     Harnack,  for  instance,  is  much 


264  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

more  happy  in  dealing  with  the  history  of  Christianity 
than  with  its  essence.  He  is  a  great  historian,  and  a 
valuable  apologist ;  but  as  a  theologian  he  is — not  so 
great.  And  yet  the  half-taught  mind  concludes  that 
eminence  in  the  one  direction  makes  a  man  an  authority 
in  the  other.  It  really  takes  a  great  deal  of  theology 
to  revolutionise  theology. 

§         §         § 

I  may  illustrate  what  I  mean  by  the  treatment  of  a 
passage  which  is  of  great  moment  for  the  question  that 
engages  us.  The  allusion  by  St.  Paul  to  the  pre-existence 
and  kenosisof  the  Son  in  Phil.  2,  is  almost  a  aira^  Xeyofxevov, 
(except  2  Cor.  viii.  9.)  Now  what  is  the  interpretation  put 
on  that  fact,  that  singularity,  by  the  extreme  critics  ? 

There  are  two  possible.  We  may  think  that  such  an 
allusion  is  but  a  brilliant  flash  that  looked  in  upon  the 
writer's  mind  only  to  be  mentioned  and  then  to  vanish 
without  settling  in  his  thought.  It  is  a  mere  happy 
thought,  an  injected  parenthesis,  a  jewel  dropped  on  the 
way  by  a  rich  and  lavish  mind,  too  urgent  in  his  spiritual 
flight  to  stop  and  recover  it  up  for  further  use.  The 
rarity  of  reference  is  then  interpreted  as  a  sign  of 
the  comparative  eccentricity  of  the  idea  in  the  writer's 
mind.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  we  may  be  more  impressed 
by  the  weight  of  the  reference  than  by  its  rarity.  We 
may  think  that  the  isolation  and  length  of  the  passage  in 
a  practical  book  is  due  to  its  greatness.  We  may  recall 
that  the  whole  New  Testament  (and  especially  the 
Epistles)  is  occasional  in  its  nature,  much  of  it  pastoral, 
edificatory,  intending  Church  business  and  not  theological 
system.  St.  Paul  was  not  what  orthodoxy  made 
Luther — a  professor  of  Dogmatics.  The  theology  comes 
in  by  the  way,  as  the  ground  of  the  religious  or  moral 


X.]  The  Pre-existence  of  Christ  265 

appeal.  However  fundamental,  it  is  allusive  and 
incidental ;  it  is  not  dwelt  upon  in  that  proportion  to 
its  intrinsic  value  which  it  would  have  if  the  writer  kept 
chiefly  in  view  the  majesty  and  proportion  of  Christian 
truth. 

Now  of  these  two  possible  views  about  rarity  of 
reference,  the  tendency  of  mere  criticism  is  to  prefer  the 
former.  The  latter  requires  a  finer,  ampler,  literary 
instinct,  a  more  imaginative  psychology,  a  judgment 
more  sympathetic  and  flexible,  with  more  spiritual 
savoir  /aire.  The  critical  tendency  is  to  say  that  the 
idea  in  question  counts  for  little  in  St.  Paul  because  it 
is  a  passing  allusion.  This  is  an  inference  the  more 
strange  from  men  who  otherwise  depreciate  the  Apostle 
as  a  systematiser,  and  find  his  greatness  in  the  suggestive 
wealth,  the  vistas,  of  his  experiential  thought. 

There  are  other  instances.  It  is  held  to  be  a  mere 
theologoumenon,  for  instance,  to  say  that  in  his  death 
Christ  really  judged  and  executed  the  sinful  principle, 
paralysed  it  at  the  core  of  human  nature  and  history, 
and  broke  the  heart  of  its  objective  power ;  on  the 
ground  that  St.  Paul,  the  great  expositor  of  his  death, 
seems  only  to  allude  to  it  in  a  parenthetic  reference 
to  the  action  of  his  sacrifice  as  "  condemning  sin  in 
the  flesh."  The  development  of  the  idea  in  the  fourth 
Gospel  seems  overlooked  — the  destroying  of  the  prince 
of  this  world. 

And  the  tendency  I  am  speaking  of,  this  quantitative 
criticism,  this  concordance  criticism,  reaches  a  climax 
when  it  is  applied  to  Christ's  own  references  to  his 
pre-cxistcnce  or  his  atoning  death  in  the  Synoptics. 
Because  they  are  few,  therefore  they  are  comparatively 
insignificant.    They  are  few,  it  is  said,  because  the  matter 


266  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

did  not  bulk  in  Christ's  own  consciousness.  But  a 
criticism  with  some  psychological  imagination  may  sug- 
gest another  interpretation.  They  may  be  few  just  because 
they  bulked  unspeakably  in  Christ's  mind.  His  thoughts 
about  his  death  were  unutterable,  except  in  an  act ;  just 
as  in  the  Last  Supper,  when  all  his  teaching  had  failed, 
he  resorts  to  what  Keim  so  finely  calls  "  his  last 
parable,"  the  object  lesson,  the  enacted  revelation, 
finished  in  the  supreme  aira^  Aeydjuevov  of  the  cross, 
(which  is  also  ignored  by  much  criticism).  These 
thoughts  were  too  great  and  engrossing  to  be  spoken  of, 
especially  to  his  dull  entourage.  "  How  am  I  straitened." 
Too  straitened  in  doing  the  thing,  when  it  came  to  a  head, 
to  be  other  than  silent  about  it.  The  captain  is  not 
loquacious  in  the  rapids.  He  does  not  talk  about  sea- 
manship in  the  storm.  The  pilot  does  not  teach  naviga- 
tion in  shooting  a  savage  bar.  Remember,  moreover, 
that  the  first  bearing  of  Christ's  great  and  crowning 
action  was  upon  God  and  not  man.  He  was  adjusting 
the  relation  between  God  and  man,  and  not  impressing 
individuals,  or  doing  a  thing  calculated  to  impress 
posterity  with  a  religious  message  in  a  religious  way. 
He  was  dealing  with  God  for  the  race.  Hence,  as  the 
crisis  deepened,  his  words  and  thoughts  were  oblivious  of 
men  and  their  reception  of  Him,  and  engrossed  with 
what  he  was  doing  with  God.  If  his  supreme  object  was 
to  act  on  men,  the  aTra^  Acyd/zcva  on  the  inmost  matters 
are  not  intelligible.  They  are  inadequate  for  the 
purpose. 

The  more  rare  the  reference  the  more  seminal  it  may 
be,  and  often  has  been.  Isaiah  53  is  quite  unique  in  the 
Old  Testament.  Yet  one  might  venture  to  say  it  is  the 
passage  in  the  Old  Testament  which  is  the  link  with  the 


X.]  The  Pre-exisience  of  Christ  267 

New,  yea,  the  germ  of  it,  and  the  passage,  which  has  most 
affected  the  conception  of  the  most  unique  thing  in  the 
New  Testament — the  cross — both  with  the  Saviour,  the 
Church,  and  the  world.  And  so  also  the  kenotic  passage 
in  Philippians  ii.  has  had  an  effect  upon  Christian 
thought,  faith,  and  adoration  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
space  the  New  Testament  gives  to  the  idea  ;  as  it  must 
have  had  a  power  in  a  mind  like  Paul's  far  larger  than 
the  space  it  covers  in  his  letters. 

§         §         § 
Criticism,  in  its  vigorous  and  rigorous  reaction  from 

the  Teutonic  extreme  of  Idealism,  has  sometimes  about 
it,  if  not  a  narrowness,  yet  an  exility,  not  to  say  a 
stridency,  a  want  of  atmosphere  and  of  space,  which  is 
unfortunate  in  dealing  with  a  reality  like  Christian  faith, 
or  a  book  like  the  New  Testament.  There  is  what 
might  be  called  a  Synoptic  positivism  ;  which  corre- 
sponds, in  its  sphere,  to  the  Comtist  empiricism  in 
philosophy ;  and  it  makes  criticism,  in  its  present  phase, 
too  much  the  victim  of  its  own  age  to  be  the  final 
interpreter  of  History.  It  applies  religious  psy- 
chology ;  but  the  critical  science  of  religions  cannot 
give  us  the  psychology  of  religion.  A  mere  objective 
psychology  of  religion,  we  are  told  by  an  authority 
so  great  as  Troeltsch,  does  not  avail  without  a  field 
of  observation  in  the  living  faith  of  the  inquirer.  So 
that  in  religion  a  scientific  impartiality  and  personal 
disinterestedness  is  impossible;  and  at  the  root  of  all  we 
have  a  venture  of  faith  and  the  dogmatic  method.  No 
mere  Historicism  has  the  key  to  history,  especially 
religious  history ;  it  only  cleans  the  wards  of  the  lock. 
The  weighing  of  evidence  seems  at  times  even  to  impair 
the  power    to  weigh  ideas,   to  divine  personality,  or  to 


268  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

assess  faith.  Great  lawyers  are  often  poor  theologians. 
There  is  a  realism  which  bars  the  way  to  reality;  and 
to-day  we  are  much  straitened  by  it.  The  religion  of  the 
chair  may  not  lack  scenery,  but  it  does  often  lack 
horizon,  and  even  sky.  It  has  hues  but  not  atmosphere. 
It  has  detail,  but  not  distance.  The  place  is  strait  and 
the  light  is  poor.  It  is  of  Ruysdael  and  not  of  Turner. 
Or  it  has  genre,  but  not  style. 

§         §         § 

In  nothing  are  these  features  more  apparent  than  in 

our  attitude  to  such  a  question  as  the  pre-existence  of 
Christ.  Except  in  the  4th  Gospel  he  says  nothing 
directly  about  it,  therefore,  we  are  told,  it  cannot  be  real. 
It  seems  to  be  forgotten  that  the  consciousness  is  in- 
separable from  the  great  ^ira^  Aeyo/xevovof  Matthew  xi.,  27, 
which  is  treated  in  the  way  I  have  just  described.  It 
seems  even  to  be  forgotten  that  the  kenotic  explanation 
of  his  limited  knowledge  in  certain  other  respects  should 
apply  here,  and  should  suggest  an  oblivion  in  Christ  of 
his  eternal  past  indispensable  both  to  the  reality  of  his 
human  life  and  to  the  efficiency  of  his  divine  work  for 
us.  Such  oblivion  may  have  been  necessary  to  Christ 
himself  in  the  doing  of  that  work,  however  impossible  it 
was  to  those  to  whom  he  spoke  when  the  work  was  done, 
and  made  them  think  out  the  explanation  of  it,  and 
of  his  glory  who  did  it.  The  apostles  could  not  evade 
the  idea  of  a  pre-existence  which  may  have  come  home  to 
Christ  himself  only  in  the  uplifted  hours  and  the  great 
crises.  For  his  Godhead  cannot  mean  that  at  every 
hour  he  was  fully  conscious  of  all  he  was.  Probably  St. 
Paul's  belief  in  the  pre-existence  of  Christ  was  mainly 
reached  by  the  way  of  inspired,  and  I  would  say  guided, 
inference.     It  did  not  rest  on  Christ's  words.     It  was  an 


X.]  The  Pre-cxistencc  of  Christ  269 

inevitable  rebound  of  spiritual  logic  under  his  faith's 
obsession  by  the  Christ  in  glory.  Such  glory,  such 
Godhead,  could  not  be  acquired  by  any  moral  victory 
of  a  created  being  within  the  limits  of  a  life  so  brief 
as  that  of  Jesus.  In  a  similar  application  he  worked 
back  from  the  faith  that  all  things  were  made  for  Christ 
to  the  conviction  that,  as  the  end  was  in  the  beginning, 
all  things  were  made  by  Christ ;  and  by  a  Christ  as 
personal  as  the  Christ  who  was  their  goal.  And  so, 
from  the  exalted  glory  of  Christ,  Paul's  thought  was  cast 
back,  by  the  very  working  of  that  Christ  in  him  and  in  the 
whole  consciousness  of  the  Church's  faith,  to  the  same 
Christ  from  all  Eternity  by  the  Father's  side. 

§         §         § 

I  do  not  think   that  to-day  we  can   evade  this   same 

retrospective  pressure  of  our  faith,  when  its  tide  is  full, 
any  more  than  the  apostles  could. 

First  we  consider  this.  Such  a  relation  as  we  believe 
our  Saviour  now  bears  to  the  Father  could  not  have 
arisen  at  a  point  of  time.  It  could  not  have  been 
created  by  his  earthly  life.  The  power  to  exercise  God's 
prerogative  of  forgiveness,  judgment,  and  redemption 
could  never  have  been  acquired  by  the  moral  excellence 
or  religious  achievement  of  any  created  being,  however 
endowed  by  the  spirit  of  God.  I  confess  (if  I  may 
descend  so  far)  I  had  long  this  difficulty,  which 
lowered  the  roof  of  my  faith,  and  arrested  the  flight 
of  devotion.  And  I  am  afraid  from  the  state  of  our 
public  worship,  I  was  not  alone  in  that  difficulty.  I 
could  not  get  the  plentitude  of  New  Testament  worship 
or  Catholic  faith  out  of  the  mere  self-sacrifice  of  the 
liuman  Christ  even  unto  death.  Nor  could  I  rise  to 
it  from  that  level.      I  was  too  little  moved  by  his  earthly 


270  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [f^ect. 

renunciations  to  rise  to  the  dimensions  of  the  Church's 
faith,  for  I  am  not  speaking  of  its  creed,  which  was  my 
own.  The  cross  of  such  a  Christ,  who  was  the  mere 
martyr  of  his  revelation,  or  the  paragon  of  self-sacrifice, 
was  not  adequate  to  produce  the  absolute  devotion 
which  made  a  proud  Pharisee,  yea  a  proud  apostle, 
glory  in  being  Christ's  entire  slave,  and  which  drove 
the  whole  Church  to  call  Christ  Lord  and  God,  in  a 
devotion  the  most  magnificent  the  soul  has  ever  known. 
Such  worship  seemed  too  large  a  response  to  anything 
which  Jesus,  with  all  his  unique  greatness,  did  or 
determined  in  the  course  of  His  earthly  life  alone. 
The  Synoptic  record  alone  would  not  account  for  the 
Christian  religion,  nor  produce  the  plerophory  of 
Christian  faith.  Christ's  earthly  humiliation  had  to 
have  its  foundation  laid  in  Heaven,  and  to  be  viewed 
but  as  the  working  out  of  a  renunciation  before  the 
world  was.  The  awful  volume  and  power  of  the  will- 
warfare  in  which  He  here  redeemed  the  world,  and 
turned  for  Eternity  the  history  of  the  race,  was  but 
the  exercise  in  historic  conditions  of  an  eternal  resolve 
taken  in  heavenly  places.  He  could  never  be  king  of 
the  eternal  future  if  he  was  not  also  king  from  the 
eternal  past.  No  human  being  was  capable  of  such 
will.  It  was  Godhead  that  willed  and  won  that  victory 
in  Him.  If  it  was  God  loving  when  he  loved  it  was 
God  willing  as  He  overcame.  The  cross  was  the 
reflection  (or  say  rather  the  historic  pole)  of  an  act 
within  Godhead.  The  historic  victory  was  the  index 
and  the  correlate  of  a  choice  and  a  conquest  in  Godhead 
itself.  Nothing  less  will  carry  the  fulness  of  faith,  the 
swelling  soul,  and  the  Church's  organ  voice  of  liturgy  in 
every  land  and  age.     If  our  thought  do  not  allow  that 


X.]  The  Pre-existence  of  Christ  271 

belief  we  must  reduce  the  pitch  of  faith  to  something 
plain,  laic,  and  songless,  and,  in  making  it  more  homely, 
make  it  less  holy,  less  absolute,  less  adoring.  The  adora- 
tion of  Christ  can  only  go  with  this  view  of  Him  in  the 
long  run.  Nothing  lower  takes  with  due  seriousness  the 
superhuman  value  of  the  soul,  the  unearthliness  of  our 
salvation,  and  its  last  conquest  of  the  whole  world.  It 
would  reduce  the  unworldlv  value  of  the  soul  if  it 
could  be  saved  by  anything  less  than  a  Christ  before 
the  worlds.  It  came  upon  me,  as  upon  many  at  the 
first  it  must  have  mightily  done,  that  His  whole  life 
was  not  simply  occupied  with  a  series  of  decisions 
crucial  for  our  race,  or  filled  with  a  great  deed  then 
first  done;  but  that  that  life  of  His  was  itself  the 
obverse  of  a  heavenly  eternal  deed,  and  the  result  of 
a  timeless  decision  before  it  here  began.  His  emer- 
gence on  earth  was  as  it  were  the  swelling  in  of  heaven. 
His  sacrifice  began  before  He  came  into  the  world,  and 
his  cross  was  that  of  a  lamb  slain  before  the  world's 
foundation.  There  was  a  Calvary  above  which  was  the 
mother  of  it  all.  His  obedience,  however  impressive, 
does  not  take  divine  magnitude  if  it  first  rose  upon  earth, 
nor  has  it  the  due  compelling  power  upon  ours.  His 
obedience  as  man  was  but  the  detail  of  the  supreme 
obedience  which  made  him  man.  His  love  transcends  all 
human  measure  only  if,  out  of  love,  he  renounced  the 
glory  of  heavenly  being  for  all  he  here  became.  Only 
then  could  one  grasp  the  full  stay  and  comfort  of  words 
like  these  "  Who  shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of 
Christ?"  Unlike  us,  he  chose  the  oblivion  of  birth  and 
the  humiliation  of  life.  He  consented  not  only  to  die  but 
to  be  born.  His  life  here,  like  His  death  which  pointed 
it,  was  the  result  of  his  free  will.    It  was  all  one  death  for 


272  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

him.  It  was  all  one  obedience.  And  it  was  free.  He 
was  rich  and  for  our  sakes  became  poor.  What  he  gave 
up  was  the  fulness,  power,  and  immunity  of  a  heavenly 
life.  He  became  "  a  man  from  heaven."  When  Paul 
spoke  so  he  was  not  thrusting  upon  his  Churches  the 
rabbinical  notion  of  an  Adam  Kadmon,  or  ideal  man,  in 
heaven,  in  the  same  sense  as  Judaism  spoke  of  an  ideal 
existence  of  the  Temple  itself,  or  the  Law,  or  the 
Mother  Jerusalem  from  above,  or  the  heavenly  city 
which  came  down  out  of  heaven  from  God.  Probably 
enough  he  knew  the  notion,  but  only  to  transcend 
it,  to  use  it  freely  as  a  suggestion  and  not  succumb 
to  it  merely  as  a  dogma.  God  sent  his  Son,  he  did 
not  emit  him,  he  did  not  think  him.  The  heavenly  side 
of  salvation  was  not  ideal  simply  but  historic,  though 
it  was  premundane  history.  It  was  an  eternal  and 
immutable  transaction.  Things  were  done  there.  God 
sent ;  the  Son  came.  And  he  came  consenting  to 
earn  a  glory  he  was  entitled  to  claim.  In  all  most 
precious  things  must  we  not  erwerhen  what  we  ererben, 
and  appropriate  our  greatest  rights?  Godhead  came 
in  Him,  only  not  in  force  but  in  virtue,  not  gross 
and  palpable  but  in  moral  power.  He  could  have  had  his 
legions  of  angels.  He  could  have  come  and  taken  posses- 
sion of  the  world  as  a  apTrayfxov,  as  an  Alexander  seized  a 
country.  He  could  have  come  as  an  Apollo  King,  and 
taken  the  world  as  a  prize  of  war,  by  moral  storm, 
manly  beauty,  and  heroic  action.  But,  though  he  came 
as  God,  he  came  to  win  the  world  as  his  Father's  gift, 
and  by  the  Father's  way  of  the  cross  as  part  of  the  gift. 
The  self-determination  to  be  man  went  the  whole  divine 
length  to  the  self-humiliation  of  the  cross.  The  Son  ex- 
pressed his  true  nature  as  a  servant;  but  it  was  glorious 


X.]  The  Pre-existence  of  Christ  273 

as  the  service  of  the  Eternal  Son.  He  was  son  before  he 
became  man ;  even  as  in  his  earthly  life  it  was  his  sense 
of  Sonship  that  gave  him  his  sense  of  Messiahship. 
It  is  what  he  did  in  becoming  man,  more  even  than  what 
he  did  as  man,  that  makes  the  glory  of  his  achievement 
so  divine  that  nothing  short  of  absolute  worship  from  a 
whole  redeemed  humanity  can  meet  it.  Nothing  short 
of  that  heavenly  deed  can  stir  the  absolute  worship  which 
is  the  genius  and  the  glory  of  his  kingdom.  Nothing  else 
can  enable  us  to  measure  the  love  of  God,  the  thorough- 
ness, the  finality,  the  eternity  of  it.  When  God  spared 
not  his  own  Son,  and  yielded  not  even  to  the  prayer  of 
Gethsemane,  it  was  a  piece  of  Himself  that  he  forswore  ; 
and  in  the  grief  of  Christ  he  cut  off  His  own  right  hand 
for  the  sake  of  the  Kingdom  of  His  Holiness.  What 
God  felt  and  did  then  was  not  through  some  relation 
to  us  that  came  into  being  with  Christ's  earthly  life,  but 
it  was  through  something  that  underlay  it.  For  had  it 
came  into  being  then,  to  see  and  judge  the  world  in  Christ 
would  have  been  a  step  so  new  as  to  affect  the  unchange- 
ableness  of  God.  Grace  would  have  begun,  and  so  been 
finite.  But  it  was  a  step  which  lay  in  the  nature  of 
Godhead  for  ever,  in  the  eternal,  personal,  holy,  and 
obedient  relation  of  the  Son  to  the  Father,  and  in  the 
act  of  renunciation  outside  the  walls  of  the  world. 

Of  course,  when  we  come  to  discuss  the  precise  mode 
of  the  son's  pre-existence  with  the  father,  or  the  psycho- 
logical process  of  the  kenosis,  we  are  entirely  beyond 
knowledge.  The  act  is  a  postulate  of  saving  faith,  but 
the  mode  of  action  is  insoluble.  Logical  difficulties  may 
be  raised  against  any  view.  Hut  a  kenotic  theory  so  far 
has  less  than  some,  as  I  hope  we  shall  see. 

§         §         § 


274  ^^"^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

It  is  a  fact  well  recognised  that  Christ's  references  to 
his  pre-existencc  are  much  more  explicit  in  the  fourth 
Gospel  than  in  the  Synoptics.  And  when  we  consider,  it 
is  not  so  strange  as  it  seems.  If  we  take  those  Johannine 
references,  and  couple  them  with  the  indubitable  preva- 
lence of  the  belief  both  in  Paul,  in  Hebrews,  and  the 
Apocalypse;  if  we  notice,  farther,  that  the  writers  treat 
the  belief  not  as  a  new  idea  which  they  have  to  insert 
but  as  a  current  faith  which  they  would  enhance ;  we 
are  driven  to  conclude  that  it  was  a  view  early  common 
in  almost  all  sections  of  the  young  Church.  Is  it  pos- 
sible to  think  that  that  could  have  been  the  case  if  the 
belief  had  no  point  of  attachment  in  the  words  of  Christ 
himself?  It  was  a  belief  whose  challenge  went  to  the 
heart  of  Jewish  Monotheism.  So  much  so,  that,  when 
Paul  had  broken  with  Judaism,  the  result  is  expressed 
most  pointedly  in  the  fact  that  he  went  about  preaching 
Jesus  as  Lord — as  the  Kvpios  by  whom,  for  an  Israelite, 
Jehovah  alone  was  meant.  Is  it  possible,  then,  that  the 
fourth  Gospel  especially  should  have  placed  such  a  belief 
in  the  mouth  of  Jesus  himself  if  there  had  been  nothing 
in  any  of  his  sayings  to  j  ustify  it  ?  There  is  much  loose  tal  k 
about  what  his  first  believers  put  in  the  mouth  of  Jesus; 
and  too  much  of  it  among  amateurs  who  have  never 
framed  any  scientific  canon  to  regulate  the  principles  or 
limits  of  such  ascriptions,  but  who  simply  remove  what 
does  not  fit  their  views. 

§  §  § 
Of  course  that  does  not  solve  the  problem  created  by 
the  comparative  absence  from  the  Synoptics  of  the 
express  statements  we  find  in  John.  But  I  find  as  little 
difficulty  in  believing  that  Jesus  had  an  esoteric  teaching 
on  some  subjects  as  that  there  were  large  areas  of  his 


X.]  The  Pre-existence  of  Christ  275 

consciousness  on  which  he  was  entirely  reserved — such  as 
his  most  intimate  communion  with  his  Father.  I  say 
nothing  here  of  regions  where  he  was  for  the  most  part 
kenotically  ignorant.  And  it  may  well  have  been  that  it 
was  these  esoteric  hints  that  were  expanded  in  the  fourth 
Gospel.  Traces  of  them  appear  in  the  Synoptics — especi- 
ally in  the  well  known  Mat.  xi.  27,  that  embryonic  fourth 
Gospel  to  which  I  so  often  allude.  But  we  can  hardly 
be  surprised  if,  in  documents  for  general  use  in  Churches 
that  were  but  working  their  way  to  a  public  largely 
Jewish,  there  should  be  little  use  made  at  first  of  an  idea 
so  startling  to  a  Jew  and  so  blasphemous  in  effect.  For 
its  effect  was  to  set  another  personality  than  the  Father 
alongside  of  Him  on  his  throne.  It  is  quite  true,  as  I 
said,  that  the  Jews  were  not  all  unfamiliar  with  the 
notion  of  the  pre-existence  of  their  Great  Sanctities.  But 
it  was  quite  another  thing  to  assign  a  pre-existence  to  a 
personal  Messiah ;  and  both  Bousset  and  Dalman,  who 
are  among  our  chief  authorities  on  the  theology  of 
Judaism,  are  at  one  against  the  view  that  it  cherished 
the  idea  of  a  pre-existent  Messiah.  Judaism  certainly 
could  not  tolerate  the  pre-existence  of  a  Messiah  invested 
with  those  functions  and  titles  of  Jehovah  which  the  New 
Testament  ascribes  to  Jesus.  Recall  the  method  of  Jesus 
with  his  public  in  the  less  serious  matter  of  his  Messiah- 
ship.  For  most  of  his  life  he  was  reserved  about  it ;  and 
he  bore  it  home,  even  to  his  disciples,  only  in  an  indirect 
way  that  made  them  seem  to  discover  rather  than  accept 
it.  It  dawned  but  slowly,  and  it  shone  so  briefly  that 
they  lost  it  at  the  end.  Mow  much  more  need  for  reserve 
on  a  matter  so  much  more  grave?  If  he  bad  been  ex- 
plicit and  categorical  about  his  pre-existent  life  it  would 
have  been    to  invite    from   a   Jewish    crowd  a  death    as 


276  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

certain  as  Rome's  suppression  of  him  would  have  been 
had  he  raised  the  Messiah's  flag.  When  his  end  did  come 
it  was  on  the  charge  of  making  himself  equal  with  God. 
But  if  the  thought  was  in  his  mind  it  would  be  sure  to 
look  out  at  some  side  window  even  if  it  did  not  call'into 
the  street.  And  there  are  such  glimpses.  Return  to  the 
passage  I  quote  Mat.  xi.  27,  "No  man  knoweth  the 
Father  but  the  Son."  I  deal  with  that  at  more  length 
elsewhere.  I  only  ask  here  whether,  if  question  about 
the  pre-existence  did  not  arise  from  other  sources, 
that  idea  would  not  be  the  first  to  occur  in  explanation 
of  these  words.  If  they  appeared  in  John  we  should  all 
say  at  once  that  it  was  by  the  notion  of  the  pre-existence 
they  were  to  be  explained,  whether  the  writer  was  foisting 
it  on  Jesus  or  not.  The  Eternal  Father  would  demand 
for  correlative  the  Eternal  Son,  to  explain,  by  solidarity 
of  being,  the  Son's  exclusive  and  adequate  knowledge  of 
such  a  Father. 

But  the  truth  which  Christ  could  not  hope  to  impress 
by  his  words  he  impressed  by  his  crowning  act  of  death 
and  resurrection.  There  at  last  he  came  into  his  own. 
To  these  add  his  expository  work  in  the  Church  by  his 
Spirit.  It  was  such  things  that  forced  on  the  Church  its 
belief  in  his  pre-existence.  It  was  slowly  forced,  more 
slowly  than  his  Messiahship.  It  could  not  be  otherwise. 
But  it  was  inevitable,  as  the  scope  and  depth  of  that  final 
revelation  made  its  way  into  the  mind  of  faith. 

§         §         § 
It  is  important  at    a    time   like   the   present  that  we 

should  keep  clearly  in  view  the  interest  which  is  served 
by  our  belief  in  the  pre-existence  of  Christ.  Why  should 
we  press  it  ?  Why  was  it  pressed  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment?    Was  it  in  the  interest  of  some  scheme,  either  of 


X.]  The  Pre-existence  of  Christ  277 

philosophy  or  theology,  which  aimed  at  making    more 
definite  God's  relation  to  the  created  world  ?     Was  it  to 
provide  some  explanation  for  Christ's  miraculous  power, 
and  especially  for  his  resurrection  ?     Was  it  to  provide  a 
large  system  of  dogma  with  a  celestial  warrant  ?     Was  it 
to  equip  a  religion  with  a  central  figure  calculated  to  im- 
press and  command  the  imagination  ?     Was  it  because  the 
impression  made  by  the  historic  Christ  was  so  weak  that  it 
succumbed  to  the  current  notions  of  pre-existence  which 
floated  in  from  the  surrounding  air  and  settled  down  to 
germinate  in  the  warm  soil  of  faith  ?     It  was  for  none  of 
these  reasons  that  the  idea  took  the  place  it  did,  and  has 
kept  it.     It  was   not   in    the    dogmatic  interest   that  it 
arose  or  survived,  but   in  the  religious.     It  was  to  give 
full  and    infinite    effect    to    the   condescending    love    of 
God,  and  to  give  range  to  the  soul's  greatness  by  display- 
ing the  vast  postulates  of  its  redemption.     Tantae  moUs 
erat    divinam   condere   gentem.       If    we    feed     on     Christ 
it  is  on  bread    which    came   down    from   Heaven.     The 
soul's  saviour  could  be  no  less  a  power  than  the  soul's 
creator.     It  all  arose  from  a  sense  of  soul-greatness,  from 
a  direct,  intimate,  and  intense  relation  between  the  soul 
and  the  Saviour,  to  which  we  grow  daily  more  strange. 
It  arose  out  of  that  experience  ;  and  not  from  the  neces- 
sities of  a  system,  or  the  infection  from  systems  around 
These  would   have  been  easily  ignored  had  they  given  no 
means   of    expressing    the    experience   that    worked     so 
mif^litily.     It  points  in  the  same  way  when  we  note  that 
Paul,  in  Philippians  ii.,  uses  the  idea,  as  it  \\as  forced  on 
living  faith,  for  the  purposes  of  that  faith's  moral  culture 
To  protnote  a    self-renouncing    love    he    dwells    on    the 
act  of  self-renunciation  which  gave  them  for  a  Saviour 

God    himself   in    a   life    of   humiliation,   and    no  middle 
u 


278  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

being  who  was  a  mere  emanation  from  God  in  a  world 
process. 

§         §         § 

What,  we  may  ask,  has  experience  to  say  on  our  question  ? 
Can  it  have  anything  to  say  on  the  pre-existence  of  Christ 
when  it  cannot  even  speak  of  our  own  ?  Let  us  see. 
Is  our  experience  of  Christ  parallel  with  our  expe- 
rience of  ourselves  ?  To  experience  ourselves  is  a  piece 
of  psychology  ;  is  that  all  we  have  in  the  Church's 
experience  of  Christ. 

It  seems  plausible  enough  to  say  that  the  pre-existence 
of  Christ  is  not  verifiable  by  our  Christian  experience. 
But  everything  depends  on  the  experience  to  which  you 
appeal.  Is  it  that  of  the  critic  ?  Or  of  his  age  ?  Is  it 
simply  the  experience  of  a  mystic  mood,  a  pious  frame,  a 
sympathetic  religiosity  ?  Or  is  it  the  classic  experience 
of  the  regenerate,  of  the  Church  within  the  Church,  the 
really  significant  elite  of  faith  ?  Is  it  the  experience  of 
the  average  Christian  who  "loves  Jesus,"  or  that  of  the 
elect  who  show  what  the  average  Christian  means  and 
must  rise  to  be  by  his  New  Creation  ?  Is  the  experience 
of  the  ordinary  Christian  normative  for  faith  ?  It  is 
certain  that  the  spiritual  riches  of  Christ,  as  understood 
and  realised  by  the  Apostolic  succession  of  the  fit  and 
few,  especially  in  relation  to  sin,  means  what  lay 
Christianity  is  too  ready  to  pooh-pooh  as  theology,  and 
to  ban  as  metaphysic. 

It  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  great  and  fertile  of  modern 
principles  that  our  faith  has  much  more  directly  to  do 
with  the  benefits  of  Christ  than  with  the  nature  of  Christ. 
*  It  is  by  what  the  Saviour  has  done  for  me  that  I  know 
what  he  is  for  me  ;  it  is  through  the  work  of  redemption 
that  I  know  the  person  of  the  Redeemer  ;  it  is  the  work 


X.]  The  Pre- existence  of  Christ  279 

which  reveals  to  me  the  worker.'  But  it  would  be  an 
abuse  of  this  principle  if  it  were  made  to  mean  that 
Christ  is  no  more,  either  to  me  or  to  the  Church,  than 
he  is  felt  at  any  point  of  time  to  be.  If  I  am  deeply 
moved  by  the  example  or  the  ideal  he  has  stamped  on 
me,  I  am  not  therefore  justified  in  saying  that  he  is  no 
more  than  ideal  or  example.  If  I  am  touched,  humbled, 
and  cheered  by  the  way  in  which  he  reconciles  me  to 
God,  I  am  not  therefore  warranted  in  declaring  that  his 
one  work  for  me  and  for  mankind  was  in  this  reconciling 
way  alone,  and  that  it  was  a  work  with  no  action  upon 
God,  and  no  relation  to  judgment.  I  am  not  entitled  to 
say  that  the  reconciling  effect  upon  men  exhausts  the 
whole  personality  of  Christ.  The  work  does  not  reveal 
the  whole  of  the  workman  — directly,  at  least.  And  there 
is  always  the  question  how  far  our  sense  of  the  work  is 
entitled  to  prescribe  the  compass  of  it ;  that  is,  whether 
experience  is  to  be  the  measure  as  well  as  the  organ  of 
faith.  The  apostles  at  least  were  driven  by  their  expe- 
rience into  a  cosmic  interpretation  of  his  work  who 
produced  it,  far  transcending  individual  experience  ;  and 
they  have  carried  the  greatest  with  them.  If  the  effect 
of  Christ  on  us  be  but  our  reconciliation,  if  the  benefits 
be  construed  but  in  that  subjective  sense,  if  they  do  not 
extend  to  redemption  from  some  thing  more  objective 
than  our  own  frowardness  with  God,  that  is  an  effect 
that  might  have  been  produced  by  a  prophet  and  martyr 
of  unparalleled  sanctity  and  unquenchable  love.  Such  a 
subjective  construction  of  the  benefits  of  Christ  would 
not  call  for  the  life,  death,  and  resurrection  of  the  ver}' 
Son  of  God.  And  we  need  feel  no  surprise  that  to-day, 
when  Christ's  work  is  thought  to  be  exhausted  with  the 
reconciliation  of  men,  the  men  affected  by  it  should  be 


28o  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

very  unsteady,  not  to  say  light,  in  their  views  of  his 
divine  person  and  its  range  of  being.  There  would  be 
no  necessity,  in  such  a  subjective  construction  of  Christ's 
work,  for  the  belief  to  which  the  early  Church  was  driven 
by  the  apostolic  sense  of  what  they  had  in  Christ — the 
belief  in  his  pre-existence. 

§         §         § 

The  reconciling  and  redeeming  work  of  Christ  is, 
indeed,  our  grand  avenue  to  his  person  in  its  fulness ;  but 
it  does  not  exhaust  it,  unless  that  work  be  interpreted 
as  the  new  creation  in  mice.  And  certainly  if  (like  so 
many  good  but  bornees  souls  to-day)  we  reduce  the 
reconciling  work  of  Christ  to  his  earthly  life,  character, 
and  teaching,  apart  from  their  consummation  in  a  death 
which  was  more  than  worth  them  all,  if  we  cherish  a 
'  simple  '  sermon-on-the-mount  Christianity,  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  erect  on  that  basis  a  personality  so  great  as 
its  advocates  really  revere.  The  greater  the  personality 
the  more  impossible  it  is  to  give  it  full  expresssion  in 
life.  We  have  already  seen  how  large  a  part  of  the 
activity  of  his  person  Christ  reserved  in  the  secrecy  of  his 
private  and  personal  contact  with  the  Father.  And  we 
may  also  observe  that,  as  the  crisis  of  his  death  drew  on, 
it  was  this  hidden  life  that  overspread  his  soul.  He 
became  less  and  less  engrossed  with  his  prophetic  effect 
on  man,  and  more  and  more  with  such  priestly  gift  to 
God  as  God  alone  could  offer,  and  no  man. 

By  all  the  deepest  experience  of  the  Church  the  benefit 
from  Christ  is  not  exhausted  in  the  satisfying  of  the 
heart  or  in  the  pacifying  of  the  conscience.  Christ  does 
more  than  fill  or  fortify  us;  he  sanctifies.  His  work, 
consummated  on  the  Cross,  is  yet  larger  than  a  deliver- 
ance at  a  historic  point.     It  is  the  energy  of  the  whole 


X.]  The  Prc-existcnce  of  Christ  281 

eternal  person  who  culminated  in  that  act.  He  does 
more  than  release  us ;  he  has  to  uplift  and  transform  us. 
He  does  more  than  inspire  the  race,  he  completes  it.  He 
brings  it  to  the  glory  for  which  it  was  destined  by  God. 
And  for  this  no  saintliest  man  could  be  enough.  Nothing 
lower  than  the  Holy  God  could  re-hallow  the  guilty 
human  soul.  Only  the  creator  of  our  destiny  could 
achieve  it.  Of  course,  the  extent  at  any  one  time  of  the 
Church's  response  to  Christ,  or  the  soul's,  may  be 
limited.  The  horizon  of  its  experience  may  be  partial 
and  confined.  But  what  is  of  more  moment  is  the  nature 
of  that  experience.  It  is  not  psychological,  but  theologi- 
cal. It  is  not  an  experience  of  the  soul's  old  past,  nor 
even  so  much  of  its  new  self,  but  of  its  new  creator  and 
king,  its  Lord  and  its  God.  That  changes  the  nature 
of  the  experience  from  a  subjective  to  an  objective,  from 
me  to  one  who  makes  me.  It  is  not  simply  the  experi- 
ence of  an  immense  impulse,  a  vast  promotion  in  good- 
ness, a  change  of  sentiment  towards  God,  the  clearing 
up  of  misunderstandings,  and  the  wiping  of  the  slate. 
What  is  cured  is  not  merely  distance,  nor  merely  estrange- 
ment from  a  loving  God,  but  the  obsession  by  hostility  to 
a  holy  God,  and  the  guilt  of  it  all.  The  forgiveness  is 
an  absolute  gift,  but  it  is  not  an  amnesty  ;  nor  is  it  a 
revival  ;  but  in  its  nature  it  is  a  new  creation.  Christ 
does  not  bring  us  mere  absolution,  he  is  the  giver  of  a 
new  Eternal  life.  His  charge  is  the  second  creation,  and 
the  divine  consummation  of  humanity. 

Now  for  this  creative  work  no  mere  man  is  sufficient. 
The  creators  of  the  greatest  works  of  genius  are  quite 
unable  to  create  the  new  heart  within  us,  tlie  new  com- 
munion, and  to  put  us  beyond  all  cavil  as  to  our  final 
destiny    in    God,     They    cannot    make    themselves    the 


282  The  Person  and  Place  oj  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

guarantee  and  surety  of  that  destiny.  But  Christ  does 
do  this.  And  he  has  never  ceased  to  do  it.  Through- 
out the  ages  there  is  a  ceaseless  succession  of  confessors 
of  such  a  theological  salvation  and  not  only  a  psy- 
chological only,  of  a  new  act  of  creation  and  not  a 
quickened  process. 

If,  then,  such  be  the  benefit  begun  and  assured,  the 
agent  of  that  blessing  no  more  began  his  work  when  he 
appeared  on  the  earth,  than  he  ceased  it  when  he  left  the 
earth,  as  man's  way  is.  A  man  might  reconcile  me  to 
God  ;  but  could  any  greatest  man  so  keep  me  as  to  ensure 
that  we  did  not  fall  out  again  ;  or  that  if  we  did  the  due 
reconciler  would  again  appear  ?  A  man  might  reconcile 
us  to  God  but  he  could  not  unite  us  for  ever  with  God  in 
the  way  that  an  eternal  holiness  requires.  He  could  do 
no  finished  work.  The  greatest  thought  and  passion  of 
the  Church,  its  experience,  and  not  its  philosophy  or  its 
theology  alone,  has  been  driven  to  postulate  behind  all 
the  acts  of  Christ's  will  on  the  earth,  behind  all  his  pity 
and  power,  an  act  of  his  (not  merely  of  his  God  and  ours), 
eternal  in  the  heavens,  an  act  which  held  all  these  earthly 
acts  within  it.  His  person  has  been  felt  to  be  greater 
than  these  earthly  acts  could  express.  They  had  all  a 
volitional  foundation  in  the  heavens,  which,  because  it 
was  action  and  not  mere  substance,  did  not  impair  their 
reality  but  enhanced  it.  They  had  a  moral  substratum 
in  the  act  of  his  premundane  personality,  whose  power 
was  not  exhausted  in  our  rescue  alone — unless  that  rescue 
be  viewed  as  the  first  stage  of  a  New  Creation  which  had 
all  the  consummation  of  humanity  in  its  scope. 

§         §         § 
We  are  thus  driven,  by  the  real  existence  of  an  Eternal 
Father  and  our  experience  of  his  grace,  to  demand  the 


X,]  The  Pre-exhtence  of  Christ  283 

existence  of  an  equally  real  eternal  Son — both  being 
equally  personal  and  divine.  The  question,  then,  is  what 
is  the  relation  between  the  Godhead  of  the  Eternal  Son 
and  the  man  Jesus  Christ,  and  how  did  it  come  to  pass. 
Such  questions  at  once  arose  among  believers  ;  and  they 
engrossed  the  Church's  thought  during  the  early  centuries 
in  the  many  Christological  systems  that  succeeded  the 
Trinitarian  strife.  There  was  a  teeming  variety  of 
opinions  on  the  subject  in  the  redeemed  community — 
as  indeed  there  must  always  be  ;  and  room  must  be 
made  for  them.  Christian  faith  insists  on  the  reality 
of  the  incarnation  as  a  fact  if  we  take  in  all  its 
seriousness  the  experience  that  we  have  in  Christ  a 
gracious  and  holy  God  truly  with  us  ;  but  the  mode  of 
its  process  is  an  open  question,  on  which  it  cannot  be 
hoped,  and  hardly  wished,  that  all  the  Church  should 
think  alike.  And  we  may  have  occasion  to  note  that 
many  who  reject  the  incarnation  do  so  not  only  because 
they  wrongly  require  from  it  the  satisfaction  of  a 
philosophic  rather  than  a  religious  demand,  but,  even 
more,  because  they  cannot  see  how  such  a  process  could 
take  place.  Which  is  much  as  if  we  refused  to  act  on  a 
cable  from  America  because  we  do  not  understand  the 
modes  of  electric  action  and  transformation. 

§         §         § 

It  is  impossible  with  due  reverence  to  speak  in  any  but 

the  most  careful  and  tentative  way  of  the  relations  within 
the  Godhead.  It  has  not  pleased  God  to  make  these 
matter  of  revelation.  As  we  know  of  Christ  only  what 
he  chose  to  reveal  in  his  vocation  and  work,  so  we  really 
know  of  God  only  what  He  chose  to  reveal  in  His  Christ. 
We  practice  ourselves  a  reserve  about  our  inmost  experi- 
ences and  relations  which  may  make  intelligible,  at  least 


284  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect 

in  some  measure,  God's  own  reserve  with  the   sons  of 
Time.     On  the  other  hand  He  wills  to  be  inquired  of. 
It  is  not  the  questions  that  are  intrusive.     We  are  not 
called  on  to  sacrifice   our  intellect,   if  only  we  do  not 
idolise  it.     And  we  are  not  debarred  in  advance  from  all 
inquiry   as  to  the  conditions  of  Christ's  supramundane 
existence.     St.  Paul  did  not  feel  so  hampered.     We  are 
surely  free  at  least  to  say  some  things  which  it  could  not 
be — could  not  be  consistently  with  such  an  idea  of  God 
as    Christ    himself    revealed.     There  was    that   in    the 
earthly  personality  of  Christ  which  in  the  heavenly  could 
not  be.     For  instance,  in  the  earthly  personality  there 
was  growth ;  in  the  heavenly  there  could  be  none — unless 
perhaps  he  were  an  Arian  Son,  a  being  created  prior  to 
the  world's   creation.     What   is   of  Godhead    does  not 
grow :  it  is  from  Eternity  to  Eternity.     The  indubitable 
movement  and  change  in  the  living  personality  of  God 
does  not  take  the  form  of  growth.     Growth  belongs  only 
to  corporeal  personality  ;  and  in  his  incarnation  the  Son 
of  God  did  not  become  for  the  first  time  personal  but  only 
corporeally  personal,  personal  under  the  limited  condi- 
tion which  involve  growth.     He  did  not  enter  personal 
conditions  but  historic.     If  growth  be  essential  to  person- 
ality in  every  form  there   can  be  no  personal  God  ;  and 
our   question    then    becomes    of  a  quite   different  kind. 
There  may  therefore  be  in  Eternity  a  personal  Being  that 
does  not  come  to  Himself  and  His  perfection  by  growth. 
Whether  two  or  more  such  can  cohere  in  the  one  God  is 
again  another  question,  with  its  own  methods  of  discus- 
sion.    But  the  growth  of  a  divine  personality  in  Eternity 
is  a  much  more  impossible  thing  than  the  co-existence  of 
three. 

§         §         § 


X.]  The  Pre-cxistence  of  Christ  285 

In  Jesus  Christ  we  have  one  who  was  conscious  of 
standing  in  an  entirely  unique  relation  to  the  living  God. 
It  is  the  prophet's  prophecy  that  reveals  God,  but  it  is 
Christ's  person  ;  and  as  the  Son  it  reveals  Him  as  the 
Father.  If  His  Father  be  the  Father,  his  Sonship  is  the 
Sonship.  He  held  a  relation  to  God  as  Father  that  never 
existed  in  any  man  before.  Nay  more,  it  was  one  that 
no  man  can  ever  reach  again.  Geniuses  are  repeated,  but 
Christ  never,  the  Son  never.  For  this  relation  constituted 
his  personality.  He  was  not  a  person  who  became  a  son, 
or  was  destined  to  be  a  son,  but  his  whole  personality 
was  absolute  sonship.  This  is  not  true  of  us.  We  are 
not  sons  and  nothing  else.  The  relation  made  the 
personality  in  Christ's  case.  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
relation  made  Jesus  grow  into  a  personality,  but  it  made  up 
his  personality,  made  the  essential  thing  in  it.  That  is 
not  so  with  us.  His  personalty  had  another  foundation 
in  God  than  ours.  His  person  is  born  of  God,  ours  is 
created.  We  are  indeed  related  to  a  personal  God,  as 
his  offspring,  in  a  way  that  necessitates  our  being  persons 
too.  But  not  such  persons.  We  can  reach  and  develop 
personality  without  reference  to  God ;  he  could  not. 
Destroy  his  sonship  and  you  destroy  his  personality. 
His  personality  shaped  his  work,  our  work  shapes  our 
personality.  Indeed  his  work  was  identical  with  his 
personality.  Not  so  with  us,  whose  work  is  always 
less  than  our  personality.  Our  work  is  a  means  for 
our  personality,  his  personality  was  the  means  of  his 
work.  Of  no  man  can  it  be  said  that  his  relation  to  God 
constitutes  the  whole  personality.  But  in  the  case  of 
Jesus  the  whole  relation  to  the  Father,  namely,  sonship. 
did  constitute  that  personality.  Think  it  away  and 
nothing  is  left.     His  whole  relation   to  the  Father  would 


286  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

be  an  abstract  phrase  were  it  not  embodied  in  an  actual 
personal  Sonship,  corelate  with  the  living  Father,  knowing 
the  Eternal  Father  as  the  Father  knows  him,  and  at 
every  point  in  Eternity,  therefore,  so  knowing  because  so 
known. 

§         §         § 

There  are  various  views  among  those  who  try  to 
justify  in  thought  their  belief,  or  their  effort  to  believe, 
that  a  great  gulf  divides  Christ  from  all  other  men. 

There  are  those  for  instance  who  view  him  as  the 
realisation  of  the  divine  idea,  whether  of  Humanity  or  of 
the  Church.  The  only  pre-existence  Jesus  had  was  of 
that  nature.  It  was  not  personal  but  ideal.  I  shall 
have  occasion  to  refer  to  this  view  more  than  once  ;  and  I 
will  only  say  here  that  it  seems  to  me  quite  inadequate 
either  to  the  New  Testament  or  to  Christian  experience. 
Such  a  faith  could  have  produced  neither.  It  is  too 
remote  and  pale  to  be  the  source  of  such  a  passion  as 
evangelical  faith  has  been  in  the  history  of  the  Church. 
If  you  reduce  the  Eternal  Sonship  to  an  idea  you  will 
reduce  the  Eternal  Fatherhood  to  the  same  tenuity. 
And  all  history  follows. 

There  are  others  who  come  nearer  reahty  by  conceiv- 
ing Christ  as  the  realisation  of  the  divine  purpose.  This 
is  so  far  an  improvement  that  it  brings  Christ  into 
immediate  relation  with  God's  will  and  action  rather  than 
with  his  thought.  He  is  due  to  the  act  of  God.  He  is 
the  supreme  object  of  the  divine  election,  "  the  captain 
of  the  elect,"  the  object,  though  not  the  eternal  object, 
of  an  eternal  election — just  as  human  souls  are,  though 
in  a  pre-eminent  and  even  collective  way.  He  has  no 
personal  pre-existence.  His  election  is  thus  paralleled  to 
that  of  the  Church;  and  we  are  not  taught  the  actual 


X.]  The  Pre-fxistence  of  Christ  287 

pre-existence  of  the  Church.  It  is  not  denied  that 
an  element  in  Godhead  passes  from  ideaUty  into  personal 
reality ;  what  is  said  is  that  its  passage  is  due  to  no 
movement  or  process  of  thought,  but  to  a  personal  act 
and  purpose  of  the  Father. 

That  is  the  advantage  of  the  view.  It  has  a  more 
ethical  note.  But  its  defect  is  three-fold.  F'irst,  it  does 
not  recognise  the  difference  between  a  Church  chosen 
like  him  and  a  Church  chosen  in  Him.  Second,  if  he 
owed  his  personal  existence  to  God's  choice,  he  was 
but  one  of  many  choice  men,  and  so  we  do  not  rise 
above  the  Socinian  idea;  it  reduces  Christ  from  the 
assessor  of  God's  throne  to  the  organ  of  God's  purpose. 
And,  third,  it  leaves  no  room  for  the  consenting  act  on 
the  part  of  the  Son.  But  it  is  not  enough  for 
Christian  purposes  that  the  Father  should  send ;  it  is 
equally  necessary  that  the  Son  should  come,  and  that 
the  one  will  should  be  as  original  and  spontaneous 
as  the  other.  A  fourth  defect  is  that  sufficient  room 
is  not  left  for  the  mystical  element  so  essential  to 
Christian  faith. 

Besides,  there  is  a  criticism  which  applies  to  both 
these  views.  They  come  too  near  the  notion  that,  when  the 
idea,  or  the  purpose,  was  at  last  realised  in  Christ's 
moral  achievement  of  his  full  personality,  there  was  a 
real  addition  to  the  riches  of  Godhead  ;  that  Godhead 
at  last  fully  found  itself  in  Christ  ;  and  had  attained  by 
development  that  which  it  had  not  the  full  consciousness 
of  being  before.  What  I  said  a  little  ago  about  divine 
growth  in  Godhead  may  be   applied  here. 

§         §         § 
Instead  of  speaking  of  the  realisation  of  a  divine  idea 

or  purpose  it  meets  the   case   better  if  we  speak  of  the 


288  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

redintegration  of  a  divine  person.      This  will   be  more 
clear  I  hope  when  we  come   to   discuss  kenotic  theories 
in  the  next  lecture.     The  whole  moral  history  of  Jesus 
on  earth  was  the  ethical  resumption  of  such  personality 
as  he  laid  down  by  an  act  equally  ethical  in  its  nature. 
The  advantage  here  is  a  very  great  one.     We  have  the 
act   of  the    Son    correlative    with    that    of    the   Father. 
We  have  the  Son  acting  from  love  as  truly  and  creatively 
as  the  Father.      Otherwise   it  need  not  be  that  Jesus, 
as  the  agent  of  God's   purpose   and    his   great   gift    to 
man,   should   really   himself  love    them,    if  only   he  so 
loved  the  Father  as  to  carry  out  loyally  and  effectually 
His   great   behest.       It    need    not    follow   that    we    are 
inseparable  from  the  love  of  Christ;    who   might   con- 
ceivably retire  from  active  and  direct  concern   with   us 
when   he   had  done   his   task,    handed    us   over   to    the 
Father,  and    restored  us    to     a  love    like    his  own,  the 
Father's   will.     But    the   Christian    love   of  God  is   not 
a  love  like  Christ's,  but  a  love  for  ever  to  Christ  and  in 
Christ.     The  love  of  one  so  creative  as  Jesus   could  not 
have  been  without  spontaneous  initiative  at  the  heavenly 
outset  of  his  work.     If  he  came  as  love  it  was  love  that 
moved  him  to  come,  and  not  a  suggestion  or  a  precept, 
far  less  an   emanation,  from  the  Father's  love.      If   he 
love  to   the   endless    end,    he    loved    from    the    timeless 
beginning,    and    in    no    mere    passive    obedience.      His 
dependence    on    the    Father    was    no    mere    passivity. 
Christ's  receptivity  of  God  is  the  mightiest  act  in  human 
history ;    and    a   personality    so    mighty    and    creative 
could  never  have  come  there  as  a  mere  created    product, 
or  passive  precipitate,  of  the  divine  purpose.     He  could 
be  no  mere  intelligent  means  or  organ   of  that   purpose. 
The  whole    New    Testament    conception    of    him   as   a 


X.]  Thg  Pre-existence  of  Christ  289 

worshipped  being  is  that  of  an  end  and  not  a  means,  for 
whom  God's  judgment  is  his  judgment,  God's  kingdom 
his  own,  and  on  personal  relation  to  whom  turns  our 
eternal  relation  to  God.  His  was  a  sovereign  spontaneity ; 
which  is  not  affected  by  the  fact  that  he  prayed  the 
Father  for  power  ;  unless  we  deny  all  analogy  in  the 
region  of  the  increate  to  the  real  causality  in  created  will, 
or  to  the  true  initiative  of  inspired  prayer. 

§         §         § 

I  am  afraid  that  the  effort  to  compress  into  one  dis- 
course each  of  the  great  themes  to  which  the  last  three 
lectures  are  devoted  involves  considerable  cost  in  the  way 
of  clearness.  May  I  point  out,  as  I  close  this  lecture  and 
prepare  for  the  next,  that  I  have  in  the  rear  of  my  mind 
throughout  one  question  which  I  yet  try  to  keep  more  or 
less  in  view.  It  is  this.  If  we  hold  to  the  personal  pre- 
existence  of  Christ  do  we  not  render  His  life  as  the 
historical  Jesus  unreal  ?  We  shall  see  how  pointed  the 
question  grows  when  we  come  to  sharpen  it  to  the  issue 
involved  in  the  principle  non  potuit  peccare.  And  in  that 
form  an  answer  will  be  suggested  to  it  shortly.  But  what 
I  have  been  trying  to  do  in  the  present  lecture  is  to 
answer  it  in  the  more  general  form  shaped  by  the  pre- 
existence  alone.  Could  a  pre-existent  Christ  be  a  real 
man?  Could  he  have  the  effect  upon  history  of  a  real 
personality  if  he  was  believed  to  have  existed  before 
entering    history? 

And  by  way  of  answer  let  us  close  this  lecture  by 
clearing  our  minds  of  d  priori  notions  of  what  a  real 
personality  might  be  presumed  to  require,  a  character 
that  would  strike  us  as  aesthetically  true  if  we  found  it 
in  a  work  of  imagination.  If  the  whole  Christ  that  fills 
the    faith,  worship,    and    conquest   of  the  long  Church 


ago  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ       [lect.  x. 

could  have  been  imagined  and  presented  in  a  work  of 
literary  art  beforehand,  every  Aristotle,  Longinus  or 
Quintilian  would  have  joined  to  declare  it  an  unreal  and 
impossible  conception.  Such  a  miracle  and  inversion  of 
values  was  effected  by  Christ,  such  an  extension  of  the 
ideal  and  resource  of  personality.  Let  us  here  observe 
that  the  reality  of  a  historic  influence  is  not  to  be 
measured  simply  by  what  may  appear  to  be  the  psycho- 
logical postulates  of  a  character  aesthetically  complete, 
but  by  the  magnitude,  reality,  and  permanence  of  his 
effects  in  history.  These  must  be  our  first  standard  of 
personal  reality.  A  personal  unreality  could  never  be- 
come the  first  personal  influence  in  history  that  the 
Christ  from  heaven  has  become.  The  Christ  that  has 
become  such  is  not  the  humane  and  residual  Christ  of 
much  current  religion,  but  the  whole  New  Testament 
Christ.  It  is  a  Christ  who  had  not  to  be  stripped  by 
early  criticism  of  his  heavenly  life  in  order  to  become  a 
real  power ;  but  on  the  contrary  one  whom  the  faith  he 
created  had  to  place  in  partnership  with  the  Creator's 
Eternity  in  order  to  account  for  itself.  The  more  the 
Church  felt  the  reality  of  his  influence  on  it,  the  more  it 
acted  with  him  upon  present  history,  the  more  it  found 
through  him  an  even  greater  reality  in  the  future  than  the 
present,  so  much  the  more  has  it  been  driven  to  construe 
his  total  reality  as  including  his  personal  action  in  the 
infinite  past.  His  pre-existence,  that  is  to  say,  has  not 
robbed  him  of  the  reality  that  is  shown  in  vast  historic 
effect.  And  it  may  be  observed  in  conclusion  that  if  the 
influence  of  the  Church  upon  the  world  is  less  to-day 
than  it  once  was,  that  loss  of  effect  is  at  least  concurrent 
with  an  unprecedented  weakening  of  belief  within  the 
Church  itself  in  his  life  before  life  and  his  ante-natal  will. 


LECTURE    XI 

THE    KENOSIS    OR    SELF-EMPTYING 
OF    CHRIST 


LECTURE    XI 


THE    KENOSIS    OR    SELF-EMPTYING    OF   CHRIST 


It  is  all  but  impossible  to  discuss  a  question  like  the 
Kenosis  without  entering  a  region  which  seems  forbid- 
ding to  the  lay  mind,  and  is  certainly  more  or  less 
technical.  And  yet  some  appeal  may  perhaps  be  made 
to  the  ministry,  among  those  Churches  where  the  educa- 
tion of  the  ministry  has  been  taken  seriously  and  theo- 
logically. It  is  only  when  the  ministry  despises  theology 
and  sacrifices  it  to  a  slight  and  individualist  idea  of 
religion,  that  the  Church  immolates  intelligence  and 
finally  commits  suicide.  It  parts  with  staying  power  in 
order  to  capture  a  hearing,  and  surrenders  faith  to  gain 
sympathy.  The  minds  that  are  trained  enough  to  ask 
relevant  questions  on  such  a  subject  are  also  trained 
enough  to  know  that  they  cannot  be  answered  without 
considerable  effort  on  both  sides — effort  both  to  present 
and  to  grasp.  And  such  earnest  minds  are  in  possession 
of  some  at  least  of  the  postulates  here  involved,  the  ideas 
handled,  or  the  methods  used.  The  real  difiiculty  is  with 
those  who  will  neither  qualify  to  understand  such 
questions  nor  let  them  alone. 

If  there  was  a   personal  pre-existence  in  the  case  of 

X  2g3 


294  ^^'^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

Christ  it  does  not  seem  possible  to  adjust  it  to  the  his- 
toric Jesus  without  some  doctrine  of  Kenosis.  We  face 
in  Christ  a  Godhead  self-reduced  but  real,  whose  infinite 
power  took  effect  in  self-humiliation,  whose  strength  was 
perfected  in  weakness,  who  consented  not  to  know  with 
an  ignorance  divinely  wise,  and  who  emptied  himself  in 
virtue  of  his  divine  fulness.  The  alternative  to  a  Kenosis 
used  to  be  a  Krypsis,  or  conscious  concealment  of  the 
active  divine  glory  for  practical  or  strategic  purposes.  But 
that  is  now  an  impossible  idea.  While  on  the  other  hand 
an  acquired  Godhead  would  really  be  none.  It  would  be 
but  deification.  And  at  bottom  it  is  a  contradiction.  No 
creature  could  become  God. 

I  am  aware  of  the  kind  of  objection  raised  to  the 
kenotic  theory.  Many  difficulties  arise  readily  in  one's 
own  mind.  It  is  a  choice  of  difficulties.  On  the  one 
hand  living  faith  finds  it  difficult  to  believe  that  the 
Christ  who  created  it  was  not  God.  And  on  the  other 
thought  finds  it  hard  to  realise  how  God  should  become 
Christ.  But  it  is  something  gained  to  note  that  the 
chief  difficulties  arise  on  the  latter  head,  in  connexion 
with  the  way  in  which  the  fact  came  to  pass  rather  than 
with  the  fact  itseU.  That  is,  they  are  scientific  and  not 
religious.  When  we  are  not  so  much  questioning  the 
fact  as  discussing  the  manner  of  it — not  the  what  but  the 
how — it  is  a  matter  of  theological  science  not  of  religious 
faith.  And  the  science  of  it  can  wait,  but  the  religion  of 
it  cannot. 

§         §         § 

We  cannot  form  any  scientific  conception  of  the  precise 

process  by  which  a  complete  and  eternal  being  could 
enter  on  a  process  of  becoming,  how  Godhead  could 
accept  growth,  how  a  divine  consciousness  could  reduce 


XI.]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  295 

its  own  consciousness  by  volition.  If  we  knew  and 
could  follow  that  secret  we  should  be  God  and  not  man. 
It  is  a  difficulty  partly  ethical,  partly  psychological.  Even 
if  we  admit  psychologically  that  certain  attributes  could 
be  laid  aside — the  less  ethical  attributes  like  omniscience, 
omnipotence,  or  ubiquity — could  self-consciousness  be  thus 
impaired  and  a  love  still  remain  which  was  fully  divine  ? 
And  how  can  an  infinite  consciousness  be  thought  of  as 
reducing  itself  to  a  finite?  God's  infinite  consciousness 
might  indeed  determine  itself  so  as  to  pervade,  sustain, 
and  bind  a  variety  of  finite  detail  without  losing  consci- 
ousness. An  immanent  God,  we  believe,  does  so  in 
creation.  But  if  He  parted  with  His  self-consciousness 
as  infinite  would  it  not  come  as  near  to  suicide  as 
infinite   could  ? 

That,  indeed,  is  what  Ed.  von  Hartmann  says  is  the 
very  thing  the  transcendent  God  must  do.  His  task  is 
self-redemption  from  the  blunder  and  impasse  of  a  world. 
He  must  retract  himself,  retrace  his  excursion  into  a 
cosmos,  and  restore  himself  by  a  universal  negation  of 
will  from  a  condition  of  wretched  actuality  to  the  set, 
grey,  apathetic  state  of  mere  potentiality.  By  that  self- 
renunciation  he  recovers  the  true  deity  out  of  which  he 
stumbled  and  fell  into  a  conscious  and  actual  world.  The 
divine  Sinner  becomes  the  divine  Redeemer — and  first  of 
himself.  In  redeeming  the  world  from  its  immanent 
misery  he  redeems  himself  from  his  transcendent  misery 
of  egoistic  consciousness  and  desire.  {Relig.  d.  Geistes  p. 
266).  This  seems  a  resurrection  of  the  Gnosticism  of  the 
second  century,  as  so  much  of  our  modern  speculation  is. 
And  it  is  only  a  philosophic  parody  of  the  kenotic  pro- 
cess ;  which  does  not  think  of  the  divine  self-conscious- 
ness as  going  out  of  existence,  but  only  of  its  retraction, 


296  TJie  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

concentration,  or  occultation,  in  one  constituent  of  the 
Godhead.  The  suicide  of  God  is  no  part  of  the  kenotic 
idea,  which  turns  but  on  self-divestment  as  a  moral 
power  of  the  eternal  Son  ;  who  retains  his  consciousness 
but  renounces  the  conditions  of  infinity  and  its  precreate 
form. 

§         §         § 

But  leaving  the  metaphysical  psychology  of  the  matter 
for  a  moment,  have  we  any  analogy  in  our  experience 
that  would  make  this  intelligible  or  even  credible  ? 

I  am  not  sure  that  we  have  not. 

(i.)  I    will   first  allude  to  the  familiar   experience   of 
reducing  or  obscuring  the  self-consciousness  by  a  drug 
voluntarily  taken.     Here  the  really  effective  cause  is  not 
(■he  drug   but   the   will   to   use   it.     Let  us  put  a  case. 
Suppose  an  Oriental  court,  a  foolish  young  Sultan,  and  a 
venerable   vizier,    wise,  vigilant   and    devoted,  amidst  a 
ring  of  plotting   pachas.     As  the  vizier  sits  next  to  his 
master  at  a  feast  he  observes  a  pinch  of  poison  stealthil}' 
dropped   into   the    imperial   cup.     He   has   heard  some 
Tumour  of  a  conspiracy  ;  and  he  knows  that  poison.     It 
means  slow  paralysis  and  lingering  death.     In  a  moment 
he  must  decide ;  and  he  takes  the  resolve.     There  is  no 
other  way.     He   challenges  the  king  to  a  pledge  in  ex- 
changed cups.     And  in   due  course  he  feels  the  conse- 
quence  in    the   impaired    powers  with  which    he   drags 
through  a  year  or  two  of  life.     He  lives  thus  till  the  ruler 
at  last  learns  of  his  devotion,  is  stung  to  his  feet  by  the 
sacrifice,  and  show  his  gratitude  by  such  a  change  of  life 
and  a  growth  in  royal  worth  as  rewards  his  saviour's 
love  for  all  it  had  borne.     Now  what  was  it  that  really 
eclipsed  the  good  statesman's  powers  ?     It  was  not  the 
drug,  but  the  love,  the  will,  the  decision   to  take  it  with 


XI.]  The  Kenosis  or  S el/- Emptying  of  Christ  297 

open  eyes,  and  to  part  with  all  that  made  his  high  place 
and  peace,  when  no  other  course  could  save  the  youth 
he  loved. 

(2.)  Again,  are  there  no  cases  where,  by  an  early  act 
of  choice  and  duty,  a  man  commits  himself  to  a  line  of 
life  which  entails  an  almost    complete  extinction  of  his 
native  genius,   tastes  and   delights.     Could  no  story  be 
made  of  a   great    musical   genius,  say  in    Russia,  who, 
being  as  full  of  pity  as  of  genius,  was  also  a  passionate 
sympathiser  with  the  people  ;  who  deliberately  committed 
himself,  while  young  and  in  the  flood  of  artistic  success 
to  certain  democratic  associations  and  enterprises,  well 
knowing  what  would  happen   upon  discovery;  who  was 
discovered,  and    deported    to  Siberia,    to  an   exile  both 
rigorous  and  remote,  where  the  violin  and  all  it  stood  for 
was  denied  to  him  and  all  his  comrades  for  the  rest  of 
their   life.     He    must    spend    his  whole  heart  in    loving 
fellowship  with   the  commonest  toils  and  needs,  and  in 
patient  ministrations  to  a  society  which  prison  debased. 
After  a  lifetime  of  this  the  first  brief  years  of  artistic  joy 
and  fame  might  well  seem  to  him  at  moments  almost  to 
belong  to  another  life,  and  the  aesthetic  glory  and  power 
be  felt  to  have  turned  entirely  to  social  love  and  service. 
And  all  as  the  consequence  neither  of  a  spiritual  process, 
nor   of  a    mere    indiscretion,  nor  of  a   martyrdom  only 
forced  on  him,  but  of  a  resolve  taken  clearly  and  gravely 
at  a  point  in  his  spiritual  life. 

(3.)  Or  again.  A  student  at  the  University  develops 
an  unusual  faculty  and  delight  in  philosophic  study,  and 
even  shows  clear  metaphysical  genius.  He  is  not  only  at 
home  in  those  great  matters  which  live  next  door  to  the 
very  greatest,  but  he  offers  promise  of  real,  not  to  say 
striking,  contribution  to  the  historic  development  of  that 


2g8  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

high  discipline.  Or  his  gift  may  be  in  poetic  or  plastic 
art,  to  the  like  high  degree.  But  he  is  the  only  son  in  a 
large  family  ;  and,  at  a  critical  period  in  the  family  affairs, 
the  father's  death  makes  it  his  duty  to  leave  study,  learn 
an  unpleasant  business,  pull  things  round,  and  devote 
himself  to  them  for  the  rest  of  his  life  with  the  absorption 
demanded  by  modern  industrial  conditions.  He  has  to 
resign  his  intellectual  delights,  call  in  his  speculative 
powers,  unlearn  his  native  tastes  and  associations,  and 
give  himself  up  to  active  conflict  with  a  vexatious  world 
doubly  galling  to  him.  And  in  due  course  he  comes  to 
forget  most  of  what  it  was  once  his  joy  to  know.  He 
becomes  subdued  (in  no  ignoble  way,  in  a  way  of  duty) 
to  the  element  in  which  he  has  to  work,  and  he  is 
acclimatised  to  a  world  both  alien  anl  contemptuous 
towards  his  congenial  treatment  of  the  greatest  realities. 
His  contact  with  reality  must  now  be  by  the  way  of  faith 
and  action,  and  not  by  the  way  of  thought.  He  becomes 
at  his  best  a  practical  mystic  and  amateur,  who  might  have 
been  a  leading  genius.  Economic,  social  and  ethical 
interests,  even  to  drudgery  and  heart  sickness,  come  to 
take  the  place  of  the  more  solemn  and  unearthly  concerns 
at  the  divine  call.  And  the  old  high  joy  of  thinking,  or 
art's  old  calm,  must  be  postponed  until  another  life  ;  with 
many  an  hour  of  longing,  and  many  a  homesick  retro- 
spect to  what  is,  after  all,  the  native  land  of  his  suppressed 
powers.  He  loses  a  life  but  he  finds  his  soul.  Is  this 
not  a  case  where  a  moral  and  sympathetic  volition  leads 
to  a  certain  contraction  of  the  consciousness ;  not  indeed 
by  a  single  violent  and  direct  act  of  will,  but  by  a 
decision  whose  effect  is  the  same  when  it  is  spread  over 
a  life  ?  He  has  put  himself  {sich  gesetzt)  in  a  position 
where  he  is  put  upon  {gesetzt  sein).     And,  in  applying  the 


XI.]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  299 

illustration  to  the  theology  of  a  kenosis  in  Eternity, 
where  a  thousand  years  are  but  as  one  day,  the  element 
of  time  between  choice  and  result  in  the  earthly  case 
is  negligible. 

(4.)  Speaking  more  generally,  is  there  not  often  in  our 
experience  a  connection  between  the  resolutions  and  the 
limitations  of  our  personality  ?  By  certain  deliberate  and 
early  acts  of  freedom,  love,  and  duty  we  so  mortgage  and 
limit  ourselves  that  in  due  course,  as  we  follow  them 
up,  the  moral  consciousness  ripens.  We  come  to  a 
spirituality  which  is  really  ethical  and  not  merely 
instinctive,  a  thing  of  moral  discipline  and  not  naive  nature, 
something  which  comes  to  itself  by  way  of  challenge 
and  conflict,  and  is  not  mere  legacy.  We  become  men  of 
faith  and  not  mere  religion,  men  of  moral  sagacity  and 
not  mere  honest  impulse.  By  voluntary  discipline  we 
may  come  to  love  truth  for  truth's  sake  and  not  for  our 
own ;  we  learn  to  hold  by  habit  and  not  mere  heredity 
to  the  "  ought  "  of  conscience  ;  we  lose  self  in  the  love 
and  worship  of  God,  or  in  the  service  of  man.  But  for 
the  most  part  these  conscious  heights  are  touched  but  in 
rare  hours — though  they  may  be  the  hours  of  decision 
and  committal  that  fashion  life.  We  may  soon  grow 
weary  in  the  course  we  have  taken  up.  The  very 
physical,  or  psychical,  nature  which  was  the  organ  of 
our  first  free  resolve,  asserts  itself,  and  makes  us  feel  its 
clouding  power  as  we  pursue  the  path  to  which  only  our 
freedom,  our  supernatural  self,  committed  us.  By  our 
will  we  have  come  where  our  will  is  itself  often  obscured 
and  hampered  ;  and  our  first  estate,  where  the  choice 
was  made,  is  recalled  but  in  a  dream.  So  also  Godhead, 
by  the  same  free  and  creative  will  which  gave  His 
creation  freedom,  may  pass  into  a  state  where  He  is  not 


300  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

only  acted  on  by  that  creation  but  even  submerged  in  the 
human  part  of  it ;  and  where  He  is  victimised,  indeed, 
for  a  time  by  the  perverse  freedom  He  created,  and  is 
imprisoned  in  its  death ;  by  consenting  to  which  death, 
however,  He  gives  the  supreme  and  saving  expression  to  his 
divine  will  and  life.  He  lives  out  a  moral  plerosis  by  the 
very  completeness  of  his  kenosis ;  and  he  achieves  the 
plerosis  in  resurrection  and  ascension.  And  thus  He 
freely  subdues  to  Himself  the  freedom  which  in  His 
creative  freedom  He  made. 

§  §  § 
The  more  moral  the  original  power  is,  so  much  the 
more  strength  there  is  to  sacrifice  glory  to  service,  and 
enjoyment  to  benediction.  So  that  were  the  moral 
power  that  of  deity  itself,  the  power  of  self-disglorification 
would  be  enhanced  accordingly.  Just  because  He  was 
holy  God,  the  Son  would  be  morally  capable  of  a  self- 
dispowering  more  complete  than  anything  that  could  be 
described  by  human  analogy.  As  God,  the  Son  in 
his  freedom  would  have  a  kenotic  power  over  Himself 
corresponding  to  the  infinite  power  of  self-determination 
which  belongs  to  deity.  His  divine  energy  and  mobility 
would  have  a  power  even  to  pass  into  a  successive  and 
developing  state  of  being,  wherein  the  consciousness  of 
perfect  fulness  and  changelessness  should  retire,  and 
become  but  subliminal  or  rare.  The  world  of  souls  was 
made  by  Him ;  and  its  power  to  grow  must  reflect  some 
kindred  mobile  power  in  him  whose  image  it  is.  The 
infinite  mobility  of  the  changeless  God  in  becoming 
human  growth  only  assumes  a  special  phase  of  itself. 
Had  the  myriad-minded  creator  of  souls  no  power  to 
live  perfectly  in  the  personal  and  growing  form  of  the 
souls  he  made  ? 


XI.  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  301 

But   sin  ?     There,   indeed,  we  do  reach  a  limit.     Nan 
potuit  peccare. 

But,  then,  it  is  at  once  said,  his  personality  and  man- 
hood were  not  real. 

But  what  if  it  were  thus  ?  What  if  his  kenosis  went  so 
far  that  though  the  impossibility  was  there  he  did  not 
know  of  it?  The  limitation  of  his  knowledge  is  indubitable — 
even  about  himself.  He  was  not  perfectly  sure  that  the 
cross  was  his  Father's  will  till  the  very  last.  "  If  it  be 
possible  let  it  pass."  Did  that  nescience  not  extend  to 
the  area  of  his  own  moral  nature,  and  so  provide  for  him 
the  temptable  conditions  which  put  him  in  line  with  our 
dark  conflict,  and  which  truly  moralise  and  humanise  his 
victory  when  potuit  non  peccare  ?  He  knew  he  came 
sinless  out  of  each  crisis  ;  did  he  know  he  never  could  be 
anything  else  ?  How  could  he  ?  Would  it  have  been 
moral  conflict  if  he  had  known  this?  I  am,  however,  well 
aware  how  relevant  and  how  effective  is  the  question 
whether  even  then,  whether  if  that  foregone  immunity  were 
there,  known  or  unknown,  the  battle  could  have  been  moral 
conflict  like  our  own  ;  whether  he  could  have  been 
tempted  in  every  respect  like  us;  whether  the  victory 
could  be  real.  And  in  reply  one  might  go  into  the  well- 
known  distinction  between  physical  and  moral  omnipo- 
tence, between  formal  and  moral  peccability.  I  could 
remind  you  how  possible  it  is  for  you  to  steal  some 
article  from  a  shop  on  your  way  home,  and  yet  how 
impossible.  You  could,  but  you  simply  could  not. 
Leaving  that,  however,  I  would  rather  answer  by  an 
analogy  from  the  Saviour's  own  work  in  his  Church. 
It  is  the  business  of  the  believing  Church  to  urge  on  its 
members  the  most  real  and  mortal  moral  conflict  for  the 
world — for  a  world,  that  is,  whose  redemption  our  faith 


302  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

yet  knows  to  be  already  achieved  and  secured  by  all  the 
power  of  God.  "  Work  for  the  Kingdom  ;  for  it  is  the 
God,  who  has  already  secured  the  Kingdom,  that 
worketh  in  you."  He  cannot  fail,  but  it  would  be  our 
worst  sin  to  fold  our  hands  upon  that  foregone  impossi- 
bility. We  have  sometimes  even  to  act  as  if  it  were  not 
so,  as  if  we  never  knew  it  was  so,  and  as  if  all  turned  on 
our  moral  effort  and  success  alone.  And  from  work  we 
pass  to  prayer  and  remind  ourselves  how  essential  to 
the  soul  it  is  to  lay  our  needs  before  the  Heavenly  Father 
who  knoweth  what  we  need  before  we  ask  Him. 

§  §  § 
But  there  are  also  farther  answers  to  be  made.  The 
question,  remember,  is,  whether  a  complete  kenosis 
would  not  involve  such  a  renunciation  of  divine  immunity, 
such  a  self-identification  with  man,  as  involved  a  personal 
experience  of  man's  sin  ?  And  the  farther  answer  is  two- 
fold. First,  every  touch  of  personal  guilt  would  have 
impaired  the  moral  power  required  for  such  sympathy. 
That  is  an  axiom  of  modern  experience.  The  guilty 
cannot  escape  from  himself,  cannot  empty  himself.  And 
the  incarnation  was  a  moral  act  so  supreme  and  complete 
as  to  be  possible  only  to  a  conscience  at  the  pitch  of  the 
perfectly  holy.  And  the  second  answer  is  that  what  is 
truly  human  is  not  sin.  Sin  is  no  factor  of  the  true 
humanit}',  but  only  a  feature  of  empirical  humanity 
which  is  absolutely  fatal  to  the  true.  What  is  truly 
human  is  not  sin,  but  the  power  to  be  tempted  to  sin. 
It  is  not  perdition  but  freedom.  Because  Christ  was 
true  man  he  could  be  truly  tempted ;  because  he  was 
true  God  he  could  not  truly  sin ;  but  he  was  not  less 
true  man  for  that.  Among  all  his  potentialities  that  of 
sin  was  not  there ;  because  potentiality  is  only  actuality 


XI.]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  303 

powerfully  condensed  ;  and  had  potential  sin  been  there 
its  actuality  would  have  been  but  a  matter  of  time  and 
trial.     But    temptation    was    potential ;   and    it    became 
actual  in  due  course.     He  could  be  tempted  because  he 
loved  ;  he   could    not   sin    because    he  loved   so  deeply, 
widely,  infinitely,  holily,  because  it  was  God  he  loved — 
God  more  than   man.     Thus  the  only   temptation  with 
real  power  for  him  was  a  temptation  to  good — to  inferior 
forms  of  good.     It  was  not  the  temptation  to  forsake  the 
righteousness  of  God,  but  to  seek  it  by  other  paths,  less 
moral  and  less  patient  paths,  than  God's  highway  of  the 
holy   cross.     It   was  not  salvation    that  brought  Christ 
to  the  Cross.     All    Israel   was   set  upon  the  faith  of  a 
salvation   in    God's  righteousness.     The  collision  arose 
upon  God's  way  of  righteousness.     What  more  plausible 
to   a  man  of   such    power  and  of  such    ideas  as  Christ 
than  to  organise  and  lead  his  zealot  nation  in  an  irresis- 
tible crusade  against  pagan  empire  for  a   new  order  of 
society  wherein  should  dwell  the  righteousness  of  God  ? 
That  was  the  Puritan  dream.     But  even  a  parliamentarian 
army  was  still  an  army  ;  and  a  Cromwell  ruled  for  God 
by  the  sword — as  many  of  us  who  are  his  admirers  to-day 
would  seek  the  kingdom  by  the  vote,  that  is,  by  our  politi- 
cal tactics  instead  of  by  his  military.     It  was  what  still 
makes,  and  always  has  made,  the  chief  temptation  of  his 
Church — the  reformation  of  society  by  every  beneficent 
means  except   the  evangelical ;  by  amelioration,   by  re- 
organisation, by  programmes,  and  policies,  instead  of  by 
the  soul's  new  creation,  and  its  total  conversion  from  the 
passion  for  justice  to  the  faith  of  grace,  from  what  makes 
men  just  with  each  other  to  what   makes  them  just  with 
God.     It  was   the  temptation  to  save  men   by  rallying 
their  goodness  without  routing  their  evil,  by  re-organising 


304  The  Penon  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [i.ect. 

virtue  instead  of  redeeming  guilt.  To  fleer  at  the  Church's 
anomalies  and  enormities  needs  no  great  insight  or 
courage  now;  the  lads  do  it.  But  it  does  need  more 
than  common  insight,  it  needs  more  than  shallow  scorn, 
to  realise  that  it  is  not  there  that  the  Church's  peril  lies ; 
and  that  these  palpable  things  are  but  the  graver 
symptoms  of  a  far  subtler  error  in  which  many  of  the 
critics  themselves  are  tied  and  bound.  It  is  the  error  in 
a  Church  which  preoccupies  men  with  their  rights  rather 
than  their  mercies,  with  redress  rather  than  redemption, 
with  social  change  where  it  is  men  that  must  be  changed 
if  society  is  to  be  saved,  with  their  brotherhood  to 
each  other  when  the  thing  lacking  is  sonship  to  God, 
with  goodness  rather  than  grace,  with  religion  rather 
than  faith.  It  is  the  error  which  leads  men  to  think 
that  we  can  have  a  new  Church  or  Humanity  upon  any 
other  condition  than  the  renovation  in  the  soul  of  the 
new  covenant  which  Christ  founded  in  his  last  hours, 
before  the  very  Church  was  founded,  and  which  is  the 
Church's  one  foundation  in  his  most  precious  blood. 

So  when  it  is  asked,  If  He  was  so  holy  that  he  could 
not  sin  what  becomes  of  that  moral  freedom  which 
identifies  him  with  man?  the  answer  is  that  absolute 
holiness  is  the  true  freedom  and  the  only  divine 
freedom.  Impeccable  holiness  is  the  only  power  by 
which  the  divinest  things  are  finally  done.  A  complete 
incarnation  into  a  free  humanity  is  possible  only  to 
the  absolute  holiness  which  created  the  freedom.  And 
only  a  soul  by  its  nature  identified  with  God's  holiest 
will  could  fully  use  or  impart  that  freedom  which  is 
the   ideal  of  a  true   humanity.      And  such  a  soul  must 

do  it. 

I  am  well  aware  how  supersubtle   this  must  seem  to 


XI.]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  305 

some  :  but  it  is  not  possible  to  breathe  the  air  of  a  region 
so  high  without  some  subtlety.  And  without  breathing 
that  air  the  Church  stifles  in  the  tasks  of  a  world.  She 
must  come  up  here  often  to  breathe,  when  her  very 
stalwarts  are  foreign  to  the  saving  secret,  heavy  with 
spiritual  sleep,  and  slow  of  heart  to  understand  heavenly 
things. 

§  §  § 
The  difficulty  of  conceiving  psychologically  the  kenotic 
process  in  the  divine  consciousness  is  certainly  an 
impediment,  but  it  is  not  an  obstacle.  *  It  is  out  of 
reason  '  is  the  complaint.  '  We  cannot  think  together 
the  perfect  God  and  the  growing  man  in  one  person.' 
No,  we  cannot  think  them  together.  But  also  we  cannot 
realise  them  apart.  It  is  only  by  a  paradox  of  thought 
that  we  possess  our  own  souls  and  their  reality.  The 
central  things  of  the  soul  are  thus  alogical.  Life  trans- 
cends thought.  Personality  itself  is  thus  alogical  ;  and  it 
forms  the  unity  in  which  truths  cohere  with  practical 
effect  which  will  not  harmonise  and  co-operate,  which 
refuse  to  be  systematised.  Faith  is  not  rational  in  the 
coherent,  the  scientific,  the  systematic  sense  of  the  word 
rational.  It  would  be  impossible  to  believe  in  a  God  at 
all  if  we  insisted  on  such  rationality  as  His  supreme 
norm.  That  insistence  is  the  root  of  much  atheism,  at 
least  in  regard  to  a  personal  God.  Personality  and  its 
movements  are  alogical — especially  on  an  infinite  scale. 
For  instance,  if  there  be  an  infinite  personal  God  He  is 
self-caused.  But  a  self-caused  being  is  as  great  a  blow  to 
rational  conception,  and  as  deep  a  mystery,  as  the  passage 
of  the  Son  from  his  eternal  being  to  a  life  of  limitation 
and  growth.  Yet  the  mystery  of  a  self-caused  Being 
is  indispensable  to  our   belief  in   the  divine  origin  of  the 


3o6  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

world.  And  certainly  (to  take  another  case)  to  personal 
religion  absolute  Grace  is  as  indispensable  as  our  freedom 
and  responsibility.  So  essential  for  our  faith  in  the 
divine  nature  of  Christ  also  may  be  the  mystery  of  the 
Kenosis,  and  the  inconceivability  of  the  self-dispowering 
of  the  Eternal  Son,  and  the  self-retraction  of  his  glory. 

§         §         § 

Most  theories  which  attempt  to  deal  with  the  Kenosis 
have  set  themselves  to  answer  the  question,  What  did  the 
Son  renounce  in  becoming  man  ?  What  attributes  of 
Godhead  had  to  be  surrendered  for  incarnation  ?  And  the 
replies  have  been  various.  Some  have  begun  by  a  dis- 
tinction between  the  relative  and  the  immanent  attributes 
of  God.  They  have  said  that  the  relative  attributes  are 
those  that  were  set  up  with  the  creation  of  a  world,  such 
as  omnipotence,  omniscience,  and  the  like,  which  would 
have  no  meaning  before  a  discrete  creation  was  there; 
while  the  immanent  attributes  are  those  ethical  and 
spiritual  qualities,  such  as  absolute  love  or  holiness,  without 
which  God  would  not  be  God  at  all.  And  such  thinkers 
have  gone  on  to  say  that  the  Kenosis  meant  the  renuncia- 
tion of  the  former  and  the  retention  of  the  latter.  God- 
head in  Christ  parted  with  omniscience,  and  omnipotence, 
as  with  omnipresence  ;  but  it  did  not,  and  could  not,  part 
with  absolute  holiness  or  infinite  love.  Other  theories 
have  gone  farther,  and  have  seen  in  the  Kenosis  a  renun- 
ciation of  even  such  immanent  attributes  as  a  divine 
self-consciousness  and  absolute  will. 

In  regard  to  the  former  class  of  theories  the  criticism  is 
that  even  the  relative  attributes  could  not  be  parted  with 
entirely.  At  most  they  must  be  thought  of  as  latent  and 
potential  even  were  no  created  world  there.  They  were 
ready  when  creation  arose.     They  are  equally  necessary 


XI.]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  307 

to  Godhead  with  the  immanent  qualities  which,  again, 
cannot  be  wholly  immanent,  but  must  have  a  real  relation 
to  any  world  created  by  the  Will  of  the  absolute  love. 

In  regard  to  the  second  class  of  theories,  if  the  renun- 
ciation is  carried  so  far  as  to  part  with  a  divine  self- 
consciousness  and  will,  it  is  not  clear  what  is  left  in  the 
way  of  identity  or  continuity  at  all.  What  is  there,  then, 
in  common  between  the  Eternal  Son  and  the  man  Jesus  ? 
What  remains  of  the  divine  nature  when  we  extinguish 
the  immanent  ethical  and  personal  qualities  in  any  abso- 
lute sense  ? 

§         §         § 
To  get  over  those  difficulties  we  may  perhaps  take  a 

happier  course.     Let  us  cease  speaking  of  a  nature  as  if 

it  were  an  entity  ;    of  two  natures  as  two  independent 

entities;  and  let    us  think  and  speak    of  two    modes  of 

being,  like  quantitative  and  qualitative,  or  physical  and 

moral.       Instead    of  speaking   of  certain   attributes   as 

renounced   may  we   not  speak  of  a  new   mode  of  their 

being  ?     The  Son,  by  an  act  of  love's  omnipotence,  set 

aside  the  style  of  a  God,  and  took  the  style  of  a  servant, 

the  mental  manner   of  a  man,   and   the  mode  of  moral 

action  that  marks  human  nature.  (For  morality,  holiness, 

is  surely  not  confined  to  the   infinite   mode  alone.)     He 

took  the  manner  that  marks  a  humanity  not  illustrious, 

not  exceptional,    but   sheer  and  pure,  where  pomp  has 

taken  physic,  and  exposed  itself  to  feel  what  wretches  feel 

in  life's  awful  storm.     Take  the  attribute  of  omniscience, 

for  instance.     In  its  eternal  form,   it   is  an  intuitive  and 

simultaneous   knowledge  of   all    things ;     but  when    the 

Eternal  enters  time  it  becomes  a  discursive  and  successive 

knowledge,    with    the    power    to    know    all    things    only 

potential,  and  enlarging  to  become  actual  under  the  moral 


3o8  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

conditions  that  govern  human  growth  and  the  extension 
of  human  knowledge.  Here  we  have  not  so  much  the 
renunciation  of  attributes,  nor  their  conscious  possession 
and  concealment,  as  the  retraction  of  their  mode  of  being 
from  actual  to  potential.  The  stress  falls  on  the  mode  of 
existence  of  these  qualities,  and  not  on  their  presence  or 
absence.  And  the  history  of  Christ's  growth  is  then  a 
history  of  moral  redintegration,  the  history  of  his 
recovery,  by  gradual  moral  conquest,  of  the  mode  of  being 
from  which,  by  a  tremendous  moral  act,  he  came.  It  is 
reconquest.  He  learned  the  taste  of  an  acquired  divinity 
who  had  eternally  known  it  as  his  possession.  He  won 
by  duty  what  was  his  own  by  right.  As  he  grew  in 
personal  consciousness  he  became  conscious  of  himself  as 
the  Eternal  Son  of  God,  who  had  dispowered  himself  to 
be  the  son  of  man  by  a  compendious  moral  act  whereby 
a  God  conscious  of  humanity  became  a  man  equally  con- 
scious of  deity.  And  by  a  compendious  moral  act  I  mean 
a  prevenient  act  including  in  principle  all  those  moral 
sacrifices  and  victories  which  worked  it  out  in  an  actual 
and  historic  life. 

The  attributes  of  God,  like  omniscience,  are  not  de- 
stroyed when  they  are  reduced  to  a  potentiality.  They  are 
only  concentrated.  The  self-reduction,  or  self-retraction, 
of  God  might  be  a  better  phrase  than  the  self-emptying. 
And  it  is  only  thus,  indeed,  that  growth  is  made  possible, 
and  evolution  started  on  its  career.  No  evolution  is 
possible  on  other  terms,  none  unless  the  goal  is  in  the 
start.  All  we  have  otherwise  is  only  movement  and 
variety.  So  far  is  growth,  then,  from  being  incompatible 
with,  the  infinite,  eternal,  and  almighty  that  it  is  de- 
manded by  ij:.  Evolution  is  a  mode  of  the  self-limiting 
power  innate  in  a  personal  infinite.     And  only  so  is  it 


XI.]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  309 

possible.  The  conditions  of  time  must  lie  within  the 
possibilities  of  Eternity,  the  growth  of  man  within  the 
infinite  mobility  of  the  changeless  God.  Finitwn  non 
capax  infiniti  is  the  principle  of  Deism  ;  the  principle  of 
Christian  theism  is  infinitum  capax  finiti.  If  the  finite 
lies  beyond  the  infinite  and  outside  it  then  the  infinite  is 
reduced  to  be  but  a  larger  finite ;  the  infinite  can  only 
remain  so  if  it  have  the  power  of  the  finite  as  well. 

§  §  § 
These  points  deserve,  and  need,  perhaps,  closer  atten- 
tion. An  attribute  cannot  be  laid  down,  for  it  is  only 
the  Being  himself  in  a  certain  angle  and  relation.  But 
there  are  accidental  relations,  relations,  for  instance, 
contingent  on  human  freedom,  which  determine  the  form 
in  which  the  attribute  exists.  They  determine  its  mode  of 
being,  according  to  the  particular  position  in  which  the 
subject  finds  himself.  Thus  omniscience  and  the  rest 
are  not  so  much  attributes  as  functions  of  attributes,  or 
their  modifications.  Omnipotence  means  not  that  God 
should  be  able  to  do  anything  and  everything  that  fancy 
may  suggest ;  but  that,  in  working  his  will  of  love,  God 
is,  from  his  own  free  resource,  equal  to  all  it  involves, 
and  is  really  determined  by  nothing  outside  himself. 
Omnipresence,  as  absolute  independence  of  space,  means 
that  God  is  not  hampered  by  space,  but  can  enter 
spatial  relations  without  being  tied  by  them,  can  exist  in 
limits  without  being  un free,  or  ceasing  to  be  God.  And 
so  on  with  omniscience  and  the  rest.  And  the  following 
illustration  has  been  given  from  the  spectrum.  A  dis- 
persion into  colours  is  not  essential  to  sunlight,  which  is 
light  without  it.  It  was  hailed  and  used  as  light  before 
such  a  breaking  up  was  known.  Therefore  the  disper- 
sion   is    not  a  quality   or  attribute  of  light.     But   it  is 

Y 


310  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ  [lect. 

potential  in  light  all  the  same.  As  soon  as  the  prism  is 
there  this  relative  property  of  light  appears  necessarily. 
Suspend  the  relation,  remove  the  prism,  and  the  disper- 
sion ceases.  So  it  is  with  the  divine  omniscience.  Omnis- 
cience is  only  a  detailed  aspect  of  God's  absoluteness, 
incidental  to  the  existence  of  a  creation.  Before  the 
prism  of  creation  was  actually  there  God  was,  and  God 
was  light.  He  had  absolute  and  simultaneous  intelli- 
gence as  a  necessary  feature  of  his  being.  But  since  he 
created,  the  absolute  intelligence  of  God  in  relation  to  the 
world  becomes  in  its  form  omniscience,  which  could  only 
cease  with  the  removal  of  the  world,  but  even  then  would 
only  retire  into  another  absolute  form. 

God's  knowledge,  therefore,  may  be  discrete  in  actual 
(shall  I  say  empirical  ? )  omniscience,  or  it  may  be 
retracted  and  concentrated  into  potentiality.  In  the 
Kenosis  it  is  contended  it  did  so  retire.  This  happens 
in  a  measure  even  with  ourselves.  I  am  not  at  every 
moment  in  full  consciousness  of  all  the  knowledge  I 
possess.  In  ordinary  life  I  know  much  that  I  am  not 
conscious  of,  that  never  occurs  to  me,  that  is  as  though  it 
were  not,  it  is  in  petto  and  potential  till  some  crisis  arrive. 
I  do  not  become  conscious  of  it  till  certain  circumstances 
arise,  and  a  situation  is  created  that  changes  it  from 
potential  to  actual  and  active.  Meantime,  where  is  that 
knowledge?  Does  it  exist?  Has  it  a  real  existence 
before  it  emerge  in  that  situation  ?  And  so  it  may  have 
been  when  Christ  at  the  world's  crisis  became  man — not 
a  brilliant  man,  but  true  man,  normal  man.  In  the  matter 
of  knowledge  Christ,  as  God,  Christ  in  his  eternal  form, 
had  an  intuitive  and  simultaneous  knowledge  of  all ;  but 
when  he  put  aside  that  eternal  form  of  the  Godhead,  and 
entered  time,  his   knowledge  became  discursive,  succes- 


xi.j  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  311 

sive,  and  progressive.  The  omniscience  (or  the  omni- 
potence) of  God  does  not  mean  that  it  is  incapable  of 
limitation  but  rather  that  with  more  power  than  finitude 
has  it  is  also  more  capable  of  limitation.  Only  it  is  self- 
limitation  ;  He  limits  himself  in  the  freedom  of  holiness 
for  the  purposes  of  His  own  end  of  infinite  love.  The 
divine  omniscience,  morally  retracted  and  potential  in 
Christ,  developed  by  his  exercise  in  a  life-series  of  moral 
crises  and  victories ;  till,  culminating  in  the  cross  and 
its  consummatory  victory,  it  emerged  into  actual  con- 
sciousness and  use  in  the  Glorified,  to  whom  all  things 
were  delivered  of  the  Father,  all  power  given  in  heaven 
and  earth — when  he  was  determined  by  the  resurrection 
so  as  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power.  What  he 
achieved  was  not  the  realisation  of  an  old  ideal  but  the 
redintegration  of  an  old  state,  He  became  what  he  was, 
and  not  merely  what  it  was  in  him  possibly  to  be.  He 
reconquered  by  moral  conflict,  under  the  conditions  of 
human  rebellion,  a  province,  even  within  himself,  which 
was  always  his  by  right.  In  finding  the  sheep  that  were 
lost  he  gradually  finds  the  self,  the  mode  of  self,  the  con- 
sciousness, he  had  renounced.  Even  for  himself  the 
losing  of  his  life  was  the  regaining  of  it.  The  dimin- 
uendo of  the  Kenosis  went  on  parallel  with  the  crescendo 
of  a  vaster  Plerosis.  He  died  to  live.  And  his  post- 
resurrection  power  is  other  in  form  than  that  of  his 
earthly  life.  The  form  of  a  servant  gives  place  again  to 
the  form  of  God.  There  is  a  sentence  of  Milton,  in  a 
letter  to  Bigot,  on  his  loss  of  sight  which  occurs  to  my 
mind.  "  It  is  not  so  much  lost  as  revoked  and  retracted 
inward  for  the  sharpening  rather  than  the  blunting  of 
my  mental  edge." 

§         §         § 


312  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

It  is  fruitless  to  discuss  these  matters  if  we  come  to 
their  consideration  with  only  physical  or  material  ideas 
of  what  is  meant  by  words  like  omnipotence.  A  friend 
once  told  me  that  her  little  boy  posed  her  by  discovering 
that  there  was  one  thing  God  could  not  do — he  could 
not  see  the  back  of  his  own  head.  That  is  only  an 
absurd  case  of  the  popular  and  childish  order  of  difficulty 
which  is  the  working  capital  of  popular  scepticism  as 
well  as  of  popular  apologetic.  It  starts  with  the  maxims 
of  common  sense  to  explore  the  region  of  eternal  spirit 
and  holy  immutable  morality.  And  the  object  of  educa- 
tion is  not  to  provide  us  with  ready-made  solutions  to 
such  crude  questions,  but  to  raise  people  to  putting  the 
proper  questions  and  to  get  them  into  schools  that  will 
exercise  them  in  good  and  evil.  I  am  thinking,  of  course, 
chiefly  of  the  higher  education  ;  and  I  mean  the  schooling 
in  moral  ideas,  and  in  the  methods  appropriate  to  moral 
ideas,  in  modern  times.  It  would  mean  worlds  for  our 
Christian  faith,  which  brought  such  an  inversion  of  moral 
values,  if  the  ethic  of  Kant  and  its  developments  came  to 
receive  as  much  attention  as  the  universities  have  given 
to  the  great  pagan  ethic  of  Aristotle.  I  mean  such  an 
escape  from  the  physicists,  biologists,  and  psychologists, 
however  refined,  as  shall  discipline  the  mind  in  the 
elements,  at  least,  of  ethical  method,  the  genius  of  ethical 
ideas,  and  the  sense  of  ethical  terms;  and  shall  make 
proper  answers  possible  by  enabling  people  to  put  the 
proper  questions.  The  bulk  of  the  questions  with  which 
the  amateur  critic  poses  faith,  and  the  illiterate  heretic 
delights  the  public,  are  as  unanswerable  as  if  it  were 
asked — what  is  the  difference  between  London  Bridge 
and  four  o'clock  ? 


XI.]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  313 

With  this  in  mind  I  would  return  to  point  out  that  God 
is  God  not  physically  but  morally,  not  by  power  but  by 
love.  That  is  the  Christian  revelation.  The  nature  of 
Godhead  is  Holy  Love.  There  lies  the  region,  the  nature, 
and  the  norm  of  its  omnipotence.  It  is  no  arbitrary  or 
casual  omnipotence,  which  puts  out  power  just  for  the 
sake  of  doing  it  or  showing  it.  It  can  do,  not  everything 
conceivable  to  freakish  fancy,  but  everything  that  is 
prescribed  by  Holy  Love.  To  a  physical  omnipotence 
it  is  indifferent.  Such  being  its  nature,  its  object  with 
Humanity  is  a  kingdom  of  such  holy  love.  But,  con- 
sidering man's  actual  sinful  state,  this  can  only  be  effected 
by  redemption.  To  this  end  the  Son  of  God  sympa- 
thetically renounces  the  glory  of  his  Heavenly  state.  He 
does  it  for  God's  sake  more  than  for  man's,  for  love 
of  the  Holy  more  even  than  of  the  sinner,  to  glorify  the 
Holy  through  the  sinner,  and  to  hallow  His  name.  And 
nothing  can  hallow  Holiness  but  Holiness,  nothing  else 
can  satisfy  it,  nothing  else  can  save.  God's  holy  name 
must  be  saved  that  the  sinner  may  be — and  saved  by  an 
all-holy  peer.  And  Christ  does  it  by  the  holy  way,  by  a 
moral  act  of  love,  and  not  by  a  tour  de  force.  It  is  an 
exercise  of  sanctity,  and  not  an  exertion  of  strength. 
That  is  his  satisfaction  to  God.  He  presents  God  with 
a  perfectly  holy  Humanity.  He  does  it  because  he  is 
holy  infinite  love  ;  he  can  do  it  because  he  is  almighty 
for  that  love.  It  is  not  a  love  which  might  itself  be 
finite,  only  with  a  miraculous  physical  omnipresence; 
but  it  is  an  almighty  love  in  the  sense  that  it  is  capable 
of  limiting  itself,  and,  while  an  end,  becoming  also  a 
means,  to  an  extent  adequate  to  all  love's  infinite  ends. 
This  self-renouncing,  self-retracting  act  of  the  Son's  will, 
this  reduction  of  Himself  from  the  supreme  end  to  be 


314  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

the  supreme  means  for  the  soul,  is  no  negation  of  his 
nature  ;  it  is  the  opposite,  it  is  the  last  assertion  of  his 
nature  as  love.     It  is  no  negation  of  his  freedom  ;  it  is 
rather  the    freest  energy  of  his  whole  will.      He  never 
willed  anything  so  mightily  and  freely  as  the  subjection, 
the  renunciation  of  self-will  to  the  holy  requirement  of 
God.     It  is  the  concentrated  omnipotence  of  love,  and 
not  of  mere   power,  that  underlies  his   limited   earthly 
existence.     And  it  is  incessant   obedience.     The  whole 
detail  of  that  earthly  existence  is  the  expression   of  the 
act  of  will  by  which,  in  his  omnipotent  love,  he  entered 
the  world.     "  The  act  of  a  great  spirit  is  to  be  always  in 
action."     All  his  decisions  taken  on  earth,  all  his  several 
volitions  are  integrated  in  the  one  foregone  act  that  brought 
him  to  earth,  the  one  premundane  act  of  pregnant  self- 
concentration  for  the  carrying  out  of  love's  saving  purpose 
with    the   world.       It    is   a    concentrated   and    seminal 
omnipotence  we  meet  here,  a  concentration  even  of  that 
self-concentration    wherein  the  world  was  created    and 
God  became  immanent  in  it.     If  the   Creator  could  not 
have  become  immanent  in  creation  His  infinity  would 
have  been  curtailed  by  all  the  powers  and  dimensions  of 
space.     And  if  immanence  could  not  pass  by  a  new  act 
into  mcarnation  then  God  would   have  been  lost  in   his 
world,  and  the  world  lost  to  God. 

In  love  we  were  created  and  endowed  with  freedom  by 
an  act  of  God  wherein  he  limited  his  own  freedom  by  the 
area  of  ours.  His  omnipotence  received  a  restriction — 
but  it  was  from  an  exercise  of  His  own  loving  power  and 
freedom ;  and  an  exercise  of  it  greater  than  could  be 
rivalled  by  all  the  freedom  man  received.  The  freedom 
that  limits  itself  to  create  freedom  is  true  omnipotence,  as 
the  love  that  can  humble  itself  to  save  is  truly  almighty. 


xr.]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  315 

God  in  his  vast  act  of  creative  love  laid  a  limit  upon 
himself  to  give  room  to  the  freeborn  to  live.  He  drew 
in  his  universal  energy  and  causation  to  that  extent. 
But  any  limit  laid  upon  power  by  such  love  is  an  exercise 
of  omnipotence.  And  when  God  in  his  creative  love  gave 
man  freedom,  it  was  a  mightier  exercise  of  His  own  free 
power  than  could  be  matched  by  all  the  power  man 
might  exert  or  fancy  in  the  use  of  his  freedom.  So 
it  was  also  with  the  new  Creation.  There  was 
more  omnipotence  (if  we  can  so  speak)  concentrated 
in  the  person  of  Christ  than  was  spread  in  all 
creation.  To  appear  and  act  as  Redeemer,  to  be  born, 
suffer,  and  die,  was  a  mightier  act  of  Godhead  than  lay 
in  all  the  creation,  preservation,  and  blessing  of  the 
world.  It  was  only  in  the  exercise  of  a  perfect  divine 
fulness  (and  therefore  power)  that  Christ  could  empty 
and  humble  himself  to  the  servant  he  became.  As  the 
humiliation  grew  so  grew  the  exaltation  of  the  power 
and  person  that  achieved  it.  It  was  an  act  of  such 
might  that  it  was  bound  to  break  through  the  servant  form, 
and  take  at  last  for  all  men's  worship  the  lordly  name. 

Let  us  escape,  then,  from  crude  notions  of  finite  and 
infinite,  of  weakness  and  omnipotence.  If  the  infinite 
God  was  so  constituted  that  he  could  not  live  also  as  a 
finite  man  then  he  was  not  infinite.  There  was  a 
limitation  to  that  extent  on  His  power's  infinity,  and  one 
which  he  Himself  did  not  impose.  Hut  if  He  did  live  as 
finite  man,  then  so  far  was  it  from  being  a  limitation  of 
His  freedom  (except  externally  and  formally)  that  it  was 
the  greatest  exercise  of  it.  It  was  the  greatest  act  of 
moral  freedom  ever  done.  The  Godhead  that  freely 
made  man  was  never  so  free  as  in  becoming  man.  His 
self-limitation  was  so  far  from   impairing  his  being  that 


3i6  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

it  became  the  mightiest  act  of  it  that  we  know.  It  was 
not  limitation  so  much  as  concentration.  Was  Christ 
less  mighty  for  his  work  when  he  was  straitened  till  it 
should  be  accomplished  ?  It  was  rather  His  intensest  con- 
centration for  the  carrying  out  of  His  final  purpose  with 
the  world.  It  was  the  most  condensed  expression  of  holy 
love.  It  was  holy  love  acting  at  a  point  once  for  all.  And 
holy  love  (may  I  repeat)  is  the  supreme  category  of  the 
Almighty.  It  is  the  object  for  which  all  God's  omni- 
potence exists.  To  achieve  that  object  is  His  true 
omnipotence.  How,  then,  could  omnipotence  be  impaired 
by  its  own  supreme  act  ?  Such  divine  immanence  as  is 
implied  in  Creation  rises  by  a  farther  and  mightier  limi- 
tation to  incarnation.  But  it  is  by  a  new  creative  act — 
not  by  prolonging  the  old  process ;  not  by  a  culmination 
in  Christ  of  the  soul  of  the  world,  not  as  the  summit  of 
God's  identity  with  the  world  ;  but  by  a  unique,  crowning, 
and  moral  act  of  self-identification.  Immanence  cannot 
explain  incarnation,  which  is  a  new  departure  of  more 
moral  nature.  The  incarnation  is  not  God's  identity 
with  the  world  prolonged,  but  a  new  self-identification, 
which  is  yet  older  than  the  world.  The  self-limitation 
became  more  severe,  but  it  also  rose  to  a  new  and  a 
mightier  exertion  of  divine  power.  If  one  may  use  a 
figure  from  physics,  the  structure,  the  nature,  of  His 
action  on  the  world  changed  under  the  increased  pressure. 
By  his  own  will  God  in  Christ  reduced  his  intelligence 
from  being  actual  to  being  potential,  within  the  kingdom 
of  power  or  nature  ;  while  from  that  potentiality,  as 
Christ  grew  in  grace,  it  developed  and  regained  actual 
omniscience  by  living  it  back,  by  the  moral  way  of  the 
kingdom  of  Grace,  till  he  left  the  world  behind,  to  be 
determinei  as  the  Son  of  God  in  power. 


xi.J  The  Kenosis  or  Self- Emptying  of  Christ  317 

§         §         § 
It  need  hardly   be  pointed   out  how  free  such  views 

leave  us  in  regard  to  those  ignorances  and  limitations  in 
Christ  which  make  so  much  more  trouble  to  us  than  they 
did  to  the  evangelists  ;  those  errors,  in  respect  of  the 
form  of  the  future  no  less  than  the  history  of  the  past, 
which  he  shared  with  his  time  and  race.  If  a  young 
critic  tells  us  that  Christ  was  ignorant  of  many  things 
which  the  modern  schoolboy  knows,  we  may  wish  the 
fact  put  more  reverently,  and  less  like  a  school-boy,  but 
we  have  no  vital  interest  in  challenging  it.  If  we  are 
reminded  that  there  were  miracles,  and  even  teachings, 
which  were  impossible  to  all  his  power  and  knowledge 
("  greater  things  than  these  ")  because  he  was,  like  most 
preachers,  dependent  on  his  audience,  and  could  do 
nothing  mighty  amid  unbelief — there  is  little  to  trouble 
us  in  that.  If  he  did  not  know  it  was  because  he  con- 
sented not  to  know.  And  whatever  he  did  not  know,  at 
least  he  did  know  that  which  is  the  root,  and  key,  and 
goal  of  all  knowledge.  He  knew  to  its  foundation  that 
fear,  and  obedience,  and  communion  of  God  which  is  the 
beginning  of  all  wisdom  that  is  not  self-destructive.  And 
whatever  he  could  not  do — and  he  could  not  invent  print- 
ing— he  could  do  the  one  thing  needful  for  God,  the  one 
thing  which  chanj^ed  our  relations  to  God,  the  one  thing 
needful  to  give  man  the  power  of  doing  at  last  what  he 
was  made  for,  and  of  achieving  through  His  redemption, 
the  eternal  kingdom  of  God,  in  which  telegrams  and  air- 
ships arc  forgotten  among  the  potsherds  of  the  earth.  He 
did  the  central  deed  in  which  all  man's  great  and  final 
doing  lies  potential.  He  secured  for  ever  the  moral 
realm  without  which  our  engineers  are  but  building  sand 
and  organising  catastrophe.     He   did   the  work  of  God  ; 


3i8  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesii^  Christ         [lect. 

and  he  did  it  in  the  sense  that  his  doing  was  God  at  His 
supreme  work.  It  is  here  that  we  find  our  safe  seat  amid 
the  inevitable  results  of  criticism.  And  it  is  here  we  find 
a  far  lar^^er  Saviour  than  the  humane  Jesus  of  mere 
religions  liberalism.  It  is  no  way  to  deal  with  so  great  a 
blessing  as  criticism  arbitrarily  to  challenge  or  curb  its 
rights.  The  way  is  to  fix  our  faith  beyond  its  reach.  It 
is  to  return  to  the  Epistles  for  the  key  of  the  Gospels,  for 
the  evangelical  secret,  and  the  principle  of  the  Highest 
Criticism  of  all.  The  judgment  of  the  cross  criticises  all 
criticism,  and  the  finality  of  its  felt  salvation  is  the  rock 

impregnable. 

§         §         § 

To  recapitulate.  The  Church  has  always  taught  an 
earthly  renunciation  on  the  part  of  Christ,  which  takes 
its  eternal  value  from  the  premundane  renunciation 
that  made  him  Christ.  We  have  to  make  our  re- 
nunciations in  life  alone;  but  he  made  his  before  life. 
We  have  no  choice  as  to  our  birth  ;  he  had.  His  will 
to  die  was  also  his  will  to  be  born.  It  is  only  by 
such  a  moral  act,  and  not  in  the  course  of  some  ideal 
process,  that  we  can  think  of  his  entry  from  a  world 
of  power  and  glory  upon  the  conditions  of  earthly  life. 
Only  by  a  moral  act  could  he  incarnate  himself  in  human 
life,  which  is  in  its  nature  a  grand  act,  choice,  and  venture, 
which  is  moral  at  its  core,  moral  in  its  issues,  and  moral 
in  its  crown.  If  it  was  a  real  and  universal  human  life 
he  lived,  that  could  only  be  by  virtue  of  a  moral  act 
which  is  at  least  on  the  scale  of  the  race ;  and  if  he  was 
to  master  the  race  his  act  must  be  on  an  even  greater  scale, 
greater  than  the  whole  race's  best,  and  as  great  as  Holy 
God.  The  act  that  consented  to  become  man  was  a 
superhuman  act,  an  act  of  God.     He  did  become  crea- 


XI,]  The  Kenosis  or  Self-Emptying  of  Christ  319 

turely.  He  did  not  simply  enter  a  creature  prepared  for 
him.  When  he  was  born  human  nature  was  not  trans- 
formed by  a  special  creation  into  some  superhuman  thing 
for  the  spirit  of  God  to  enter — as  a  foreign  palace  might, 
by  great  furnishing  effort  and  outlay,  be  transformed  into 
an  English  home  to  honour  a  visit  from  our  king.  Nor 
were  the  two  streams  parallel  while  unmingled.  There 
could  not  be  two  wills,  or  two  consciousnesses,  in  the 
same  personality,  by  any  psychological  possibility  now 
credible.  We  could  not  have  in  the  same  person  both 
knowledge  and  ignorance  of  the  same  thing.  If  he  did  not 
know  it  he  was  altogether  ignorant  of  it.  But  the  ever- 
during  Sun  in  heaven  was  focussed  in  Christ — condensed 
to  burn  the  evil  out  of  man.  The  divine  energy  was 
concentrated  for  the  special  work  to  be  done.  The  ful- 
ness of  the  Son's  Godhead  was  still  the  essence  of  Christ. 
That  Godhead  lost  nothing  in  the  saving  act.  It  took 
the  whole  power  of  Godhead  to  save  ;  it  was  not  the  Son's 
work  alone  ;  far  less  then  was  it  the  work  of  any  impaired 
Son.  It  was  not  the  work  of  a  God  minorum  gentium,  as 
the  Arian  Christ  is.  It  could  not  be  the  work  of  any 
created  being,  however  great.  The  value  of  the  soul 
would  slowly  and  surely  sink  if  we  believed  it  salvable  by 
any  creature.  It  would  lower  the  soul  that  the  most 
High  made  for  Himself  were  it  saved  by  a  second-class 
God.  Such  is  the  ethical  effect  on  society  of  a  false 
theology.  The  divine  nature  must  belong  to  the  universal 
and  final  Redeemer,  however  its  mode  and  action  might  be 
conditioned  by  the  work  it  had  to  do.  The  divine 
qualities  were  there ;  though  their  action  was  at  once 
reduced,  concentrated,  intensified  within  the  conditions 
of  the  saving  work.  The  divine  qualities  were  kept,  but 
only  in  the  mode  that   salvation  made  necessary.     Jesus 


320         The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ       [lect.  xi. 

did  not  know  everything  actually,  empirically,  but  only 
what  was  needful  for  that  work.  But,  as  that  is  the 
central  final  work  in  human  nature,  the  knowledge 
required  for  it  contains  the  promise  and  potency  of  all 
knowledge.  And,  as  to  the  exercise  of  power,  he  did 
what  God  alone  could  do  in  forgiving  human  sin,  a  salva- 
tion which  is  the  nucleus  and  germ  of  all  worthy  power 
beside.  His  knowledge,  his  power,  his  presence  were  all 
adjusted  to  his  vocation.  His  vocation  was  not  to  apply 
or  exhibit  omnipotence,  but  to  effect  the  will  of  infinite 
love,  and  master  all  that  set  itself  against  that.  And  that 
divine  vocation  was  only  possible  to  one  who  had  a 
divine  position.  The  world's  Redeemer  must  be  the  Son 
of  God. 

§  §  § 
If  we  ask  how  Eternal  Godhead  could  make  the  actual 
condition  of  human  nature  His  own,  we  must  answer,  as 
I  have  already  said,  that  we  do  not  know.  We  cannot 
follow  the  steps  of  the  process,  or  make  a  psychological 
sketch.  There  is  something  presumptuous  in  certain 
kenotic  efforts  to  body  forth  just  what  the  Son  must  have 
gone  through  in  such  an  experience.  God  has  done 
things  for  his  own  which  it  has  not  entered  into  the 
heart  of  man  to  conceive.  It  is  the  miracle  behind  all 
miracle.  All  detailed  miracle  was  but  its  expression.  It 
is  the  miracle  of  grace.  And  it  can  be  realised  (little  as 
it  can  be  conceived)  only  by  the  faith  that  grace  creates, 
that  answers  grace,  and  works  by  love.  Let  us  not  be 
impatient  of  the  secret.  Love  would  not  remain  love  if 
it  had  no  impenetrable  reserves.  Love  alone  has  any  key 
to  those  renunciations  which  do  not  mean  the  suicide  but 
the  finding  of  the  Soul. 


LECTURE    XII 

THE    PLEROSIS    OR    THE 
SELF-FULFILMENT    OF    CHRIST 


LECTURE    XII 


THE    PLEROSIS    OR    THE    SELF-FULFILMENT    OF    CHRIST 


The  closeness  of  the  Church's  bond  with  Christ  will 
always  go  hand  in  hand  with  its  belief  in  his  deity. 
And  the  more  it  realises  his  salvation  the  more  it  will 
know  the  roots  of  it  to  be  in  the  great  act  of  a  Christ 
before  the  worlds.  The  whole  faith  of  the  Church  has 
turned  upon  a  conception  of  Christ  which  sees  in  him 
the  act  of  God,  and  worships  in  him  God's  immediate 
revelation,  God's  personal  guarantee  of  His  holy  saving 
love,  and  the  eternal  mediator  of  our  communion  with 
Him.  Christ  is  much  more  than  the  personal  reali2a- 
tion  of  the  idea  of  Humanity  and  the  guarantee  of  its 
universal  attainment.  That  is  to  say,  in  the  Church's 
history  a  faith  in  the  God  in  Christ  underlay  a  faith  in 
the  man  in  him.  The  disciples  indeed  began  with  the 
divine  prophetic  man,  in  the  order  of  knowledge  ;  but  with 
the  apostles  and  the  Church  it  was  otherwise.  They  came 
to  read  him  in  the  order  of  value,  not  from  the  man  up- 
wards but  from  the  God  downwards.  That  was  after 
the  great  finale  which  made  disciples  into  apostles  and 
a  group  into  a  Church.  What  did  this,  what  made 
apostles,  and  made  a  Church,  was  not  the  humane  side 


324  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

or  function  of  Jesus,  but  the  redeeming  God  in  Jesus. 
A  Church  and  a  theology  must  be  inseparable  always. 
The  saving  faith  that  makes  a  Church  lays  hold  of 
Christ  theologically,  in  his  deity.  It  does  not  view 
him  as  the  pledge  of  our  human  future,  but  as  the 
foundation  of  our  new  communion  with  a  holy  God  who 
will  make  Humanity's  future  just  what  his  Kingdom 
demands.  Living  faith  knows  nothing  of  an  undogmatic 
Christ.  An  undogmatic  Christ  is  the  advertisement  of  a 
dying  faith.  Christ's  permanent  relation  to  the  world  is 
dependent  on  something  that  can  only  be  dogmatically 
expressed — on  his  eternal  relation  to  the  Father.  His 
effect  in  ensuring  its  final  destiny  depends  on  his  eternal 
relation  to  the  Father,  on  his  sonship  before  the  world 
was.  He  is  the  final  Saviour  of  men,  and  the  surety  of 
man's  future,  only  as  the  Eternal  Son  of  God.  No 
created  agent  of  God  could  give  us  that  certainty  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  which  faith  must  have  for  the  King- 
dom's sake.  It  must  come  in  a  constant  and  living 
mediator  who  is  no  mere  medium ;  in  a  historic  person 
who  is  not  a  mere  historic  link  between  the  ages;  in  the 
only  begotten  Son  who  declares  the  Father  from  His 
bosom,  and  who  is  the  revelation  he  brings.  For  only 
God  can  reveal  God.  And  the  King  of  God's  Kingdom 
must  be  God. 

Hence,  if  faith  be  not  saving  faith  but  only  sym- 
pathetic; if  it  be  but  an  illumination,  or  an  inspiration, 
and  not  a  new  creation  ;  if  it  be  a  spiritual  culture  and 
not  a  spiritual  conversion  ;  if  it  is  first  concerned  to  be 
liberal  and  not  evangelical,  progressive  and  not  positive, 
not  regenerative;  then  there  is  no  foundation  and  no 
future  for  any  belief  in  the  Godhead  of  Christ,  however  we 
may  play  with  old  terms. 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self- Fulfilment  of  Christ       325 

_  §         §         § 

Such  a  belief  is  an   experience  which  breaks  into  two 

orders   of  inquiry.     It    opens    up    questions    about    the 

threefold    nature    of    God,    or    a    Trinity    as    deep   as 

Godhead,  and  questions  about  Christ's  historic  person — 

how  the  humanity  of  Jesus  is  related  to  his  Godhead, 

how    the    nature    of    his   personality   fits    his    function 

as    the    direct   visitation    of    God.       It    is    this    latter 

question,  the  Christological  rather  than  the  Trinitarian 

question,   that    is    of   such    lively   interest  to-day.      But 

any    belief  in    either   a    Trinity  or    an   Incarnation   can 

only  flow  from  a  final   experience  of  grace  by  the  sinful 

soul.     And  it  belongs  solely  to  a  Church  which  confesses 

the  sin  of  the  world  only  because  it  confesses  still  more 

humbly  and  gladly  the  absolute  holiness  of  the  Saviour. 

The  Godhead  of  Christ  is  an  interest  of  religion  before 

it  is  an  interest   of  theology.     It  is  the  spring  of  that 

worship  of  Christ,  which  in  the  history  of  the  Church 

preceded  and  inspire  1   thought    about  him.     When  we 

worship    Christ    the    living  Lord  and  the  organ  of  our 

communion  with  God  (as  the  Church  has  steadily  done), 

or  when  we  give  him  absolute  obedience  as  the  King  of 

the  Kingdom  of  God  and  the  living  guide  of  all  history  to 

that  consummation,  then  we  give  him  a  place  that  can  be 

held  by  no  mere  part  of  creation,   and  no  mere  unit  of 

history.     Is  the  Kingdom  of  God  the  consummation  of 

creation  ?     Then    surely  the    Saviour    and    King  of  the 

Kingdom    must    be  one    with  the    Creator   of  creation. 

The  world  which  was  made  for  such  a  Christ  must  have 

been  made  by  him.     The  largest  conception  of  creation  is 

much  more  than  cosmic  in  range  ;  it  is  also  redemptive 

in  power.     It  thinks  of  the  cosmos  as  the  arena  or  the 

base  of  God's  salvation.     The  ground  plan  of  creation — 

z 


326  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jcsu^  Christ         [lbct. 

what  is  it  if  it  be  not  found  in  the  final  plan  of  salvation  ? 
Has  creation  any  ground  plan  else  ?  Plenty  of  process, 
but  what  plan,  what  goal  ?  The  goal  to  which  the  whole 
creation  moves — is  it  not  that  Eternal  Redemption  ? 
Does  it  not  all  wait  and  work  to  the  manifestation  of  the 
Sons  of  God  ?  The  whole  cosmos  is  great  with  the  re- 
deemed Kingdom.  But  if  so,  surely  then  the  Kingdom's 
Saviour  and  King  is  Creation's  Maker  and  Humanity's 
God.  Christ  as  the  soul's  living  Lord  must  be  the 
Eternal  Son. 

I  know  that  this  is  a  logic  more  spiritual  than  rational. 
The  problem  is  not  philosophic.  It  is  certainly  not  to 
find  a  reasoned  adjustment  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite 
of  an  absolute  and  created  life.  Nor  is  it  a  question  of 
deifying  Humanity,  as  the  Church's  earlier  creeds  were 
apt  to  construe  it,  and  the  positivist  mind  tends  to 
construe  it  still.  The  question  is  this — when  we  begin 
with  the  Gospel,  when  we  begin  with  God's  holy  and 
loving  will  for  the  world  in  Christ — how  are  we  to  secure 
its  realization  in  man  ?  How  are  we  to  establish  in  man 
as  a  race  Christ's  mutual,  personal,  and  loving  com- 
munion with  such  a  God?  That  is  something  which  no 
prophet  was  ever  able  to  do.  Prophetism  was  a  failure 
for  such  a  Kingdom  ;  it  could  not  establish  a  national, 
to  say  nothing  of  a  racial,  communion  with  God  ;  how 
could  a  Christ  merely  prophetic  succeed  ?  Did  Christ 
succeed  by  that  part  of  his  life  which  was  chiefly 
prophetic — the  part  prior  to  his  death  ?  The  result 
of  his  life  and  teaching  was  that  they  all  forsook  him 
and  fled  ;  but  the  result  of  his  cross,  resurrection,  and  glory 
was  to  rally  them  and  create  the  Church  in  which  he 
dwells.  Is  not  the  creation  of  God's  Kingdom  a  task 
beyond  the  power  of  any  instrument,  any  creature  ?  Is 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self- Fulfilment  of  Christ       327 

it  not  God's  own  work  ?  Whoever  did  it  must  be  God 
himself.  Godhead  must  directly  perform  and  sustain 
the  great  act  that  set  up  such  communion.  God  must 
do  it  in  person.  Only  one  who  incarnated  God's  holiest 
will  as  His  son  alone  did  could  produce  and  establish  in 
men  for  ever  the  due  response  to  that  will — the  response 
of  their  whole  and  holy  selves.  Holiness  alone  answers 
holiness  ;  and  only  the  Holy  God  could  make  men  holy  ; 
it  could  be  done  by  no  emissary  of  His.  We  cannot  be 
sanctified  by  commission  or  deputy.  No  intimation  of 
Himself  by  God  (through  the  holiest  of  creatures) 
could  effect  such  an  end.  His  news  of  Himself  must  rise 
to  His  sacrifice  of  Himself;  His  self-sacrifice  must  further 
be  his  self-vindication  as  holy ;  and  from  that  it 
must  go  on  rising  to  His  self-communication.  The  Father 
who  spoke  by  his  prophets  must  come  to  save  in  the  Son 
and  must  occupy  in  the  Spirit.  He  offers,  gives,  Himself 
in  the  Son  and  conveys  Himself  in  the  Spirit.  He 
who  is  the  end  of  all,  humbles  himself  to  be  the 
means,  that  he  may  win  all.  God  in  Christ  asserts 
Himself  in  his  absolute  freedom  ("  I,  even  I,  am 
he");  He  limits  Himself  for  His  creature's  freedom 
("that  blotteth  out  thy  transgressions");  and  bestows 
Himself  to  make  that  freedom  communion  ("  For  I  am 
with  thee,  saith  the  Lord,  to  save  thee  ").  It  is  all  one 
holy  love  and  grace,  in  this  Eternal  threefold  action, 
both  within  God  and  upon  man.  Only  on  this  Trini- 
tarian conception  of  God  can  we  think  of  such  a  salvation 
as  ours.  Only  so  can  we  think  of  Christ  as  God  with  us. 
But  then  also  we  must  follow  on  to  ask  how  such  a 
Christ  is  related  to  this  eternal  and  invisible  God. 

§         §         § 
We   have  no  call   to-day  to    prove  the  real  manhood 


328  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

of  Jesus.  For  that  is  universally  owned ;  and  it  is  all 
that  many  can  own.  Things  were  otherwise  in  New 
Testament  times,  when  it  was  freely  held  that  the  man- 
hood was  phantasmal  and  unreal.  It  is  against  such  a 
notion  that  the  writings  of  John  are  directed,  and 
especially  his  Epistles— a  fact  which  makes  them  some- 
what irrelevant  when  used  against  the  Socinian  position 
in  our  own  time.  They  were  directed  on  people  who 
were  more  ready  to  admit  the  divinity  of  Christ  than 
his  humanity.  And  with  such  people  we  have  at  the 
moment  little  to  do. 

Nor  are  we  always  called  to  convince  people  of  the 
uniqueness  of  the  man  Jesus.  That  is,  in  some  sense, 
freely  owned  by  most  who  consider  the  matter  seriously 
at  all.  Everything  turns  on  what  is  meant  by  unique, 
whether  he  is  unique  in  degree  or  in  kind,  whether  it  is 
the  difference  between  the  created  and  the  increate.  I 
have  more  than  once  pointed  out  that  what  is  denied  to-day 
is  not  a  superior  revelation  in  Christ  but  the  absolute 
finality  of  that  revelation.  What  we  have  to  stand  by  is 
that  finality — not  of  course  in  the  sense  that  evolution 
has  come  to  an  end,  but  in  the  sense  that  all  evolution 
is  now  within  God's  final  word  and  not  up  to  it.  It  is 
unfolding  the  Christ  and  not  producing  him.  Christ  is 
God's  seventh  and  last  day  in  which  we  now  forever 
live  and  labour  in  rest.  That  is  to  say,  the  divine  reve- 
lation is  final  but  the  human  religion  which  answers  it  is 
not  final.  The  word  is  final,  but  the  response  is  pro- 
gressive. The  finality  is  as  to  the  kind  of  God  revealed 
and  not  as  to  the  compass,  which  always  enlarges  upon  us 
as  culture  enlarges  our  grasp.  It  is  a  question  of  the 
explication  of  God's  last  gift  of  Himself.  And  what  we 
have  chiefly  to  keep  in  view  is  the  sort  of  uniqueness  in 


xii.j       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self -Fulfilment  of  Christ      329 

the  man   Jesus  which  is  required  for  the  final  and  per- 
sonal gift  of  Godhead  in  him. 

Now  for  such  a  purpose  a  Christ  merely  kenotic  is  in- 
adequate. We  have  already  seen  that  all  revelation  is 
God's  self-determination.  For  any  real  revelation  we  must 
have  a  loving  self-determination  of  God  with  a  view  to 
His  self-assertion  and  self-communication;  and  this 
self-determination  must  take  effect  in  some  manner  of 
self-divestment.  We  have  examined  the  kenotic,  or  self- 
emptying  theories  of  such  an  act,  and  we  have  found 
them  either  more  helpful  or  less.  But  whether  we  take 
a  kenotic  theory  or  not,  we  must  have  some  doctrine 
of  God's  self-divestment,  or  His  reduction  to  our 
human  case.  Yet,  if  we  go  no  farther  than  that, 
it  only  carries  us  half-way,  it  only  leads  us  to  the 
spectacle  of  a  humbled  God,  and  not  to  the  experi- 
ence of  a  redeeming  and  royal  God.  For  re- 
demption we  need  someting  more  positive.  It  is  a 
defect  in  kenotic  theories,  however  sound,  that  they  turn 
only  on  one  side  of  the  experience  of  Christ,  viz.,  his 
descent  and  humiliation.  It  is  a  defect  because  that 
renunciatory  element  is  negative  after  all;  and  to  dwell 
on  it,  as  modern  views  of  Christ  do,  is  to  end  in  a 
Christian  ethic  somewhat  weak,  and  tending  to  ascetic 
and  self-occupied  piety.  For  we  can  be  very  self-occupied 
with  self-denial ;  it  is  the  feminine  fallacy  in  ethics.  We 
must  keep  in  view,  and  keep  uppermost,  the  more  positive 
process,  the  effective,  ascending,  and  mastering  process 
which  went  alongside  of  the  renunciation  in  Christ,  nay, 
was  interwoven  with  it,  as  its  ruling  coefficient.  I  mean 
that,  besides  the  subjective  renunciation,  we  must  note 
the  growth,  the  exaltation,  of  his  objective  achievement, 
culminating  in  the  perfecting  at  once  of  his  soul  and  our 


330  Thi  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

salvation  in  the  cross,  resurrection,  and  glory.  I  should 
not  decline  to  speak  carefully  of  a  progressive  in- 
carnation. We  must  have  some  view,  which  may  be 
kenotic  indeed,  but  must  also  be  more  positive  than 
kenoticism  alone. 

§  §  § 
Now,  the  whole  Christology  of  the  Church,  I  keep 
saying,  has  been  its  effort  to  conceive  by  thought  the 
reality  it  lived  on  in  its  faith  of  Christ's  saving  work  and 
presence  for  good  and  all.  For  the  most  part,  we  have 
seen,  the  Church  has  tried  to  solve  the  problem  by  the 
doctrine  of  two  distinct  natures  inseparably  coexisting  in 
the  person  of  Jesus.  Sometimes,  indeed,  it  has  gone  so 
far  as  to  speak  of  two  personalities  coexisting  within  that 
single  historic  life.  But  no  creed  (we  have  seen)  has  ever 
been  able  to  do  more  on  such  a  basis  than  to  place  the  two 
natures  or  persons  alongside  each  other,  to  say  that  each 
must  be  believed  as  a  postulate  of  Christian  faith  and  ex- 
perience, and  to  repel  attacks  or  heresies  which  threatened 
to  destroy  either,  or  to  enhance  the  one  at  the  expense  of 
the  other.  No  systematic  reconciliation,  far  less  a 
psychological,  has  ever  yet  been  effected.  And  the 
attempts  at  adjustment  have  always  have  tended  to  im- 
pair one  side  or  other  of  the  antinomy.  One  nature  lost 
a  piece  of  itself  to  the  other,  and  so  really  lost  its  indis- 
cerptible  self;  or  else  one  was  swallowed  up  by  the  other. 
Either  an  injury  was  done  to  the  nature  of  human 
personality,  by  ignoring  its  necessary  law  of  growth  and 
making  Jesus  a  mechanical  prodigy  of  abstract  revelation, 
without  a  moral  interior  (as  in  By^antinism)  ;  or  damage 
was  done  to  the  unity  and  changelessness  of  the  triune 
God  (as  in  Arianism,  or  in  some  extreme  kenotic  theories). 

§         §         § 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self- Fulfilment  of  Christ       331 

Most  of  those  theories  were  fastened  on  the  Church 
in  the  interests,  indeed,  of  a  true  redemption,  but  at  a 
time  when  the  theology  of  redemption,  was  apt  to  be 
conceived  in  terms  of  substance  rather  than  subject,  of 
metaphysic  rather  than  ethic,  of  things  rather  than  per- 
sons. The  terms  were,  however  finely  material,  yet  too 
material  to  be  duly  personal  and  ethical.  The  object  of 
redemption  in  the  creed-making  age  was  less  to  forgive 
man  than  to  immortalise  him,  less  to  convert  him  than 
to  deify  him.  It  was  not  a  work  of  grace  in  the  sense  of 
mercy,  in  the  sense  of  destroying  mortal  guilt,  but  in  the 
sense  of  destroying  a  fatal  disease.  Grace  was  the  in- 
fusion of  an  incorruptible  divine  nature  or  substance  into 
corruptible  human  nature.  It  was  antiseptic.  It  was 
the  inoculation  of  the  one  nature  by  the  other,  and  the 
consequent  gift  of  dcfidapa-ta  rather  than  forgiveness  and 
communion.  It  gave  life  rather  than  moral  peace.  It 
was  not  the  restoration  of  unclouded  personal  relations 
so  much  as  the  deification  of  human  nature  by  trans- 
fusion of  the  divine.  It  was  more  a  communication  of 
properties  than  a  communion  of  hearts  and  wills.  And 
it  is  easy  to  see  the  result  of  such  a  theory  in  the  Roman 
doctrine  of  the  sacraments,  the  kind  of  virtue  they  convey, 
and  the  ethic  with  which  they  may  co-exist. 

But  we  have  come  to  a  time  in  the  growth  of  Christian 
moral  culture  when  personal  relations  and  personal 
movements  count  for  much  more  than  the  relations  of 
the  most  rare  and  etherial  substances.  The  conscience 
has  come  to  be  the  locus  of  faith,  especially  since  the 
Reformation  turned  grace  from  subsidy,  or  antidote,  to 
mercy.  It  is  a  question  of  the  holy  conscience  of  God  in 
relation  to  the  guilty  conscience  of  man.  We  are  con- 
cerned with  a  relation  of  wills,  of  the  holy  will  and  the 


332  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lfxt. 

unholy.  Redemption  is  moral  regeneration,  and  not 
mere  cure,  not  mere  rescue  from  an  entail  of  spiritual 
disease  and  death.  We  are  not  to  blame  for  a  mere 
disease,  but  redemption  is  rescue  from  what  does  leave 
us  culpable.  Sin  is  more  than  a  disease;  and  it  is 
curable  by  no  magical  infusion,  but  only  by  moral  action 
on  the  part  of  God ;  wherein  person  deals  with  person, 
and  soul  with  soul,  in  a  mutual  act  of  Grace  and  Faith. 
Faith  is  man's  greatest  moral  act,  as  Grace  is  God's. 
It  becomes  the  serious  acceptance  of  God's  mercy  and 
not  the  reception  of  Christ's  body.  Regeneration  is  the 
result  of  faith  and  not  of  baptism.  Death  is  banished 
by  new  living.  Such  faith  is  what  makes  Christianity  ; 
and  its  experience  is  the  material  of  all  theology.  Thus 
religion,  salvation,  gives  the  law  to  theology,  and  not 
theology  to  salvation.  This  is  especially  the  case  with 
Christology.  Forgive  me  if  I  repeat  so  often  that  the 
principle  from  which  we  must  set  out  to  understand  the 
person  of  Christ  is  the  soteriological  principle.  Any 
metaphysic  must  follow  that  and  not  precede  it;  it  must 
be  a  metaphysic  of  history  and  not  of  being,  of  soul  and 
not  of  substance,  of  the  moral  soul  and  not  the  noetic 
substance,  of  ethic  and  not  of  thought — and  especially  of 
the  Christian  ethic  condensed  in  faith  as  the  new  life. 
All  Christology  must  rest  on  a  moral  salvation,  spiritually 
and  personally  realised.  And  any  metaphysic  involved 
must  be  the  metaphysic  of  redemption,  which  is  only  the 
superlative  of  a  metaphysic  of  ethics.  We  believe  and 
therefore  we  speak.  We  believe  and  then  we  think. 
We  explore  the  New  Creation.  It  is  from  the  experi- 
ence of  Christ's  salvation  that  the  Church  proceeds  to 
the  interpretation  of  the  Saviour's  person. 

§         §         § 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self- Fulfilment  of  Christ       333 

Starting,  then,  from  the  canon  that  the  Incarnate  is 
immediately  known  to  us  only  as  the  Saviour,  it  might  be 
better,  it  might  save  us  much  confusion  and  collision,  if 
we  were  less  concerned  to  speak  or  think  of  the  two 
natures  within  the  life  of  Christ,  as  we  have  long  ceased 
to  think  of  two  persons,  or  two  consciousnesses.  Neither 
does  justice  to  the  interest  of  salvation.  As  that  interest  is 
the  interest  of  personal  communion,  and  not  of  human 
deification,  it  might  be  better  to  describe  the  union  of  God  and 
man  in  Christ  as  the  mutual  involution  of  two  personal  move- 
ments raised  to  the  whole  scale  of  the  human  soul  and  the 
divine. 

§         §         § 
This  is  what  I  would  venture   (with  more  heart  than 

hope)  to  expound. 

There  is  a  certain  fascination  at  present  in  the  idea  of 
Christ  as  the  apex  of  that  spiritual  evolution  which 
emerges  to  a  divine  height  in  man.  He  is  viewed  as  the 
consummation  of  a  grand  spiritual  process  construed  on 
scientific  lines,  as  if  all  the  series,  from  the  nebula  to 
man,  were  a  vast  pneumatic  biology.  And  doubtless  if 
the  human  process  in  history  were  simply  one  of  teeming 
movement  onward  and  upward,  there  would  be  no  difficulty 
but  much  propriety  in  speaking  of  Christ  as  the  divine 
blossom  of  the  race,  or  its  "  heaven-kissing  hill."  But 
then  I  have  more  than  once  said  that  if  such  evolution 
were  the  law  and  scheme  of  life,  its  crown  and  bloom 
must  be  at  the  close  of  the  series,  and  not  in  the  far 
past.  We  could  have  no  Christ  till  we  had  evolved  into 
the  Kingdom  of  God.  But  the  historic  Christ  is  there 
to  act  on  man  and  save  him,  and  not  simply  to  consum- 
mate him.  He  is  there  to  bring  about  man's  consum- 
mation and  not  simply  exhibit  it.     He   is  not  a  product 


334  ^/'^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

of  man's  spiritual  evolution  but  its  grand  source.  If 
ever  we  attain  to  Christ  it  is  by  Christ.  The  King 
makes  the  Kingdom  and  not  the  Kingdom  the  King. 

Moreover  we  have  seen  that  moral  experience  and  the 
psychology  of  faith  will  not  let  us  think  of  man's  spiritual 
history  as  a  process  of  simple  progress,  even  on  the  wide 
whole.  (See  Lecture  V.)  There  is  much  more  than  that 
allows  for,  more  that  is  mystic,  resolute,  dogmatic,  more 
of  a  passion,  a  collision,  and  a  tragedy  in  life ;  in  life,  note, 
and  not  only  in  some  lives.  Man  does  not  simply  unfold 
to  God  but  God  descends  and  enters  man.  With  this 
invasion  religion  has  much  more  to  do  than  with  evolution. 
The  immanent  consciousness  of  the  divine  becomes  posi- 
tive religion  only  when  the  leap,  the  choice,  the  resolve  of 
faith  treats  it  as  the  upheaval  of  a  transcendent  reality. 

For  what  is  the  verdict  of  religious  psychology  ?  How 
does  it  interpret  the  spiritual  experience  of  the  race  as 
shown  in  its  supreme  form  of  faith  ?  Life  and  progress, 
especially  on  the  religious  plane,  show  that  at  least  a  two- 
fold movement  goes  to  make  up  the  spirituality  in  human 
history,  two  movements  whose  opposite  directions  pro- 
duce much  friction.  And  I  do  not  allude  by  that  to  the 
twofold  process  within  history,  wherein  degeneration  is  at 
constant  war  with  development,  decay  with  life,  and  lapse 
with  progress.  That  might  all  go  on  on  what  I  would  call 
the  horizontal  plane  of  movement — the  onward  movement 
and  the  backward.  But  I  allude  rather  to  the  vertical 
action,  so  to  say,  in  which  man  is  constantly  seeking 
unto  a  God  and  God  is  constantly  passing  into  man. 
Christianity  is  a  religion  of  depth  before  it  is  a  religion 
of  breadth.  It  spreads  to  all  souls  because  it  pierces 
the  whole  soul.  It  is  so  catholic  because  so  radical,  so 
liberal  because  so  searching.       Its   God  the    heaven    of 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self- Fulfilment  of  Christ       335 

heavens  cannot  contain  ;  and  he  does  not  shrink  from 
descending  into  hell.  Its  kingdom  does  not  grow  up 
through  the  ground  like  the  grass ;  it  descends  out  of 
heaven  from  God.  Its  prayer  that  ascends  there  is  moved 
by  a  spirit  which  comes  down  from  there.  Man's  word 
to  God  is  interlocked  with  God's  word  to  man.  To 
conceive  history  as  the  field  of  those  two  movements  on 
the  upright  plane  of  spirit — the  upward  movement  of 
man's  quest  for  God,  and  the  downward  of  God's  con- 
quest of  man — is  far  more  congenial  to  the  mystery, 
grandeur,  and  tragedy  of  the  soul  than  the  simple, 
evolutionary,  and  culminating  process  on  the  level  plane 
of  Time  alone.  We  grow  laterally  every  way,  so  to 
speak,  and  not  only  on  a  plane.  The  soul  dilates  into  its 
circumambient  eternity,  as  it  were ;  it  does  not  merely 
proceed.  The  city  of  God  is  foursquare  every  way.  So 
that  we  have  this  advantage,  that,  while  we  allow  its  place 
to  the  progressive  process  which  fascinates  so  many,  we 
yet  supplement  it  with  another  which  gives  history  a  far 
more  massive  interest,  a  more  vivid,  dramatic,  and  crucial 
interest,  a  far  more  moral  interest  than  an  ordered  pro- 
cess can  yield.  We  grow  in  substance  and  power,  and 
not  merely  in  range  and  vision.  One  would  like  to  do 
justice  to  the  evolutionary  idea,  the  progressive  idea; 
but  one  would  like  still  more  to  do  justice  to  the  redemp- 
tive idea,  the  regenerative,  the  deepening  idea.  For 
Christ  came  to  do  more  to  deepen  men  than  to  broaden 
them.  He  came  as  the  fulness  and  not  simply  as  the 
ideal,  the  form  to  be  filled.  He  came  as  a  life,  and  not 
simply  as  a  line  of  life. 

These  movements  are  both  at  work  in  the  growth  of 
the  God-led  historic  soul  as  prayer  and  answer,  as  evolu- 
tion and  inspiration.    Religiously  {i.e.  supremely)  they  are 


336  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

the  two  movements  that  make  the  world,  if  we  interpret  it 
from  its  spiritual  height.  And  they  give  us  the  categories 
in  which  God  and  man  meet.  They  meet  in  action  rather 
than  in  being ;  and  the  unity  of  being  is  just  such  as  is 
required  for  mutual  action  and  communion.  God  and 
man  meet  in  humanity,  not  as  two  entities  or  natures 
which  coexist,  but  as  two  movements  in  mutual  interplay, 
mutual  struggle,  and  reciprocal  communion.  On  the  one 
hand  we  have  an  initiative,  creative,  productive  action, 
clear  and  sure,  on  the  part  of  eternal  and  absolute  God  ; 
on  the  other  we  have  the  seeking,  receptive,  appropria- 
tive  action  of  groping,  erring,  growing  man.  God  finds 
a  man  who  did  not  find  Him,  man  finds  a  God  who  did 
find  Him.  We  have  the  self-complete  God  who  cannot 
grow,  in  whom  all  things  are  already,  Yea  and  Amen  ; 
and  we  have  the  inchoate  man  who  must  grow,  and 
stumbles  as  he  grows ;  and  we  have  movement  in  each. 
We  have  on  the  one  hand  the  perfect  God  who  cannot 
grow ;  and  yet,  as  the  living  God,  he  has  in  his  change- 
less nature  an  eternal  movement  which  He  implanted  as 
growth  in  the  creature  He  made  in  his  image.  And  on 
the  other  hand  we  have  this  waxing  man,  who  only  grows 
into  the  personality  that  communes  with  God.  He 
grows  through  the  moral  exercise  of  that  passion  for  the 
Absolute  and  Eternal  which  is  so  much  more  than  God's 
return  upon  Himself  because  He  does  not  return  void  but 
laden  with  free  souls  for  His  sheaves.  We  have  these 
two  movements  permeating  the  whole  life  of  historic 
humanity,  and  founding  its  spiritual  psychology.  If  we 
leave  Christ  out  of  view  for  the  moment,  we  recognise 
such  a  strife,  such  a  "  Lord's  controversy,"  not  in  Israel 
only  but  in  the  great  psychology  of  the  race.  All 
spiritual   existence    is  action.      History   is   action,   and 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self-Fulfilment  of  Christ      337 

reciprocal  action.  It  is  commerce,  and  even  conflict, 
with  the  transcendent.  Its  sense  of  God  is  not  that  of 
subjective  immanence  but  of  living  contact  with  a  living 
spiritual  reality.  A  true  psychology  of  religion  leaves 
you  at  the  last  face  to  face  with  a  choice  and  a  venture ; 
not  an  experience  in  the  sense  of  an  impression,  but,  more 
actively,  in  the  sense  of  a  decision  ;  the  decision,  namely, 
that  what  we  feel  facing  us,  urging  us,  dominating  us,  is 
not  an  illusion  but  the  presence  and  action  of  a  transcen- 
dent reality.  That  is  the  sure  venture  of  faith.  The 
divine  thing  in  the  soul  is  not  a  mystic  subjectivity 
but  objective  truth  acting  upon  us  at  closest  quarters, 
as  a  finer,  fuller  soul  in  soul. 

The  vast  issue  in  our  personal  Humanity,  therefore, 
is  not  the  still  conjunction  of  two  natures  in  the  soul, 
but  the  crisis  of  two  permanent  and  fundamental  move- 
ments in  it;  it  is  not  the  union  of  two  entities  but  the 
action  of  two  powers,  one  passing  one  way  and  one 
another.  If  the  whole  drama  of  the  soul  of  man 
could  be  compressed  into  one  narrow  neck  and  one 
strait  gate,  that  is  what  we  should  have — the  tremendous 
friction  (so  to  say)  of  these  two  currents  within  a 
personal  experience,  And  if  we  could  widen  that  neck 
at  one  part,  what  we  should  have  would  be  a  whirlpool* 
in  which  the  two  currents  become  mutually  and  crucially 
involved,  forming  a  centre  of  perfect  rest. 

§       §         § 
Rudely    speaking,   that    may  be  used  as  an   image  of 
what  we  have  in  ('hrist.     At  his  central  place  we  have 
what   we   might  f:all   the   node  at   which   the  two  move- 
ments, being  compressed,  meet,  rotate,  and  cast  a    line 

*  What  the  old  theologians  would  have  called  a  7rc/)iY(i)^»/<ri? 


338  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

column  to  heaven.  The  calm  is  the  calm  of  intense 
victory.  If  life  be  a  comedy  to  those  that  think,  and 
a  tragedy  to  those  that  feel,  it  is  a  victory  to  those 
who  believe.  But,  however  it  may  fare  with  our  imagery, 
in  Christ,  we  have  two  things,  the  two  grand  actions  of 
spiritual  being,  in  final  peace  and  eternal  power.  We 
have  the  whole  perfect  action  of  Godhead  concentrated 
through  one  factor  or  hypostasis  within  it  *  and  directed 
manward  both  to  create  and  redeem  ;  and  we  have  also  the 
growing  moral  appropriation  by  man's  soul  moving  God- 
ward  of  that  action  as  its  own,  as  its  initial  divine  nature 
and  content.  In  Christ's  life  and  work  we  have  that  divine 
mobility  t  in  which  the  living  Son  eternally  was — we  have, 
that  coming  historically,  and  psychologically,  and  ethically 
to  be.  He  came  to  be  what  he  always  vitally  was,  by  what 
I  have  called  a  process  of  moral  redintegration.  He  moved 
by  his  history  to  a  supernal  world  that  he  moved  in  by  his 
nature.  We  have  that  divine  Son,  by  whose  agency  the 
world  of  souls  was  made,  not  now  creating  another  soul  for 
his  purpose,  but  himself  becoming  such  a  soul.  Surely,  as 
I  have  said,  if  he  had  it  in  him  to  make  souls  in  the  divine 
image  it  was  in  him  to  become  one.  On  the  one  side  we 
have  a  personality,  originally  existing  under  those 
spiritual  and  discarnate  conditions  (for  which  our  indi- 
vidualist ideas  of  person  are  so  inadequate  and  misleading) 
— we  have  that  personality  taking  the  form  and  con- 
ditions of  a  corporeal  life,  in  order  to  be  the  arena  and  the 
organ  of  God's  revelation  and  man's  redemption.  (You 
may  observe  that  what  we  are  dealing  with  is  not  a  contrast 

*  By  what  theologians  used  to  call  an  apotelesma  in  the  Son. 

•f  I  ask  leave  to  use  the  word  mobility  to  express  that  uncaused  self- 
contained  vitaUty,  that  changeless  change,  in  God  which  is  the  ground  of 
the  manward  movement  of  which  I  speak. 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self -Fulfilment  of  Christ      339 

of  finite  and  infinite  natures,  but  of  corporeal  and  dis- 
carnate  spirituality  or  personality.)    And,  on   the   other 
side,  we  have  him  growing  in  this  corporeal  personality, 
this    increate  but  creaturely  life.     We  have  his  eternal 
person  living  under  the  conditions  of  corporeal  personality ; 
we  have  his  divine  mobility,  therefore,  translated    into 
human  growth.     We  have  together  within  one  historic  hfe 
the  gradual  descent  and  the  growing  ascent,  by  a  moral 
process  in  each  case.     We  have  them  on  a  world  scale, 
an  eternal  scale,  the  scale  and  manner  of  spiritual  being 
in  so  far  as  experience  tells  us  of  spiritual  being.    And  we 
have  them  in  the  unity  of  one  historic  person,  to  show 
that,    however    inadequate    earthly    personality    is    to 
heavenly,  they  are  not  incompatible,  and  they  are  capable 
of  the  supreme  mutual  act  of  love  and  grace.     In  the 
person  of  Christ  we  have   the  crisis  and   sacrament  of 
divine  and  human   love.    Do  not  let   us  speak  here  of 
impossible    contradictions    in    logic.        Let    us    rather 
remember    here   again    that   the    reconciliation    of  such 
rational   antinomies   as    God's    sovereignty   and    man's 
freedom    only   takes    [)lace    in    the   unity   of  one   active 
person  which  has  erjiial  need  of  both  for  full  personal 
effect.  §         §         § 

Christ  thus  embodies  the  two  movements  of  spiritual 
reality  in  which  man  and  God  meet.  Such  move- 
ments are  at  bottom  acts.  For  the  world  is  not  so 
much  the  abode  of  God  as  the  act  of  God  ;  and  man's 
function  in  the  world  is  not  so  much  to  settle  immanently 
into  it.  even  into  its  growth,  as  to  overcome  it,  subdue  it, 
and  find  himself  for  a  transcendently  active  God  in  it. 
In  either  case  the  movement  is  a  vast  act,  and  the  goal  is 
a  personal  communion  of  acts.  On  either  side  the 
personality  is  put  into  a  dual  act  and  consummated  there. 


340  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

So  nuich  must  be  allowed  to  the  idea  of  immanence; 
which  is  a  very  fertile  idea  if  it  is  construed  ethically  as 
action,  and  not  ontologically  as  mere  presence  or  mere 
movement ;  if  it  is  viewed  as  the  personal  action  within 
the  world  of  a  Person  who  needs  other  persons  and  their 
free  acts  for  the  communion  which  in  Christ  He  found 
absolute  and  eternal. 

Creation  is  only  maintained  by  the  standing  act  of  the 
one  God  in  his  grace ;  who  is,  therefore,  duly  answered 
only  by  a  whole  devoted  life  as  the  standing  act  of  man 
in  his  faith.  God  is  active  in  his  work  as  its  incessant  cre- 
ator, just  as  in  His  kingdom  He  is  incessant  redeemer ;  and 
man,  too,  subsists  in  action,  and  becomes  what  his  action 
makes  him  ;  and  he  attains  the  kingdom  by  the  constant 
act  of  faith  which  integrates  him  into  the  act  of  grace. 
Life,  history,  at  its  highest  may  be  figured  as  a  wire 
traversed  in  opposite  directions  by  these  two  great 
spiritual  currents,  movements  or  acts. 

§         §         § 

Let  us  mark  still  more  carefully  their  co-existence  in 

Christ. 

First,  we  have  man's  movement  to  God,  or  man's  action 
on  God,  either  in  the  way  of  aspiration  and  prayer,  or  in  the 
way  of  acquiring  from  God  moral  personality. 

It  should  here  be  remembered  that  human  personality 
is  not  a  ready-made  thing,  but  it  has  to  grow  by  moral 
exercise,  and  chiefly,  in  the  kingdom  of  God,  by  prayer. 
The  living  soul  has  to  grow  into  moral  personality.  And 
this  should  not  be  ignored  in  connection  with  the  moral 
psjchology  of  Christ.  He  no  more  than  we  came  into 
the  world  with  a  completed  personality — which  would  be 
not  so  much  a  miracle  but  a  magic  and  a  prodigy. 

What    he    brought  with  him    (if   some    repetition    be 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self  •Fulfilment  of  Christ       341 

pardoned  in  a  series  of  lectures)  was  such  a  soul  as  was 
bound  morally  (and  not  by  a  fated  necessity)  to  grow, 
under  his  life's  vocation,  to  the  personality  that  was  the 
complete  and  final  revelation  of  God,  the  agent  of  man's 
redemption,  and    the   locus   of  man's   communion    with 
God.     A  soul  of  Godhead  is  the  necessary  postulate  of 
the  redeeming  personality ;  it  is  the  necessary  foundation 
for  the  growth  of  that  personality  ;  and  it  is  the  necessary 
condition  of  the  finality  of  his  work.     It  was  a  personality 
that  differed  from  all  others  by  finding  its  growth  to  lie 
in  the  unaided  and  sinless  appropriation  of  that  which  it 
already  was.     The  potuit  non  peccare  rests  (but  in  no  fated 
or  mechanical  way)  on  the  non  potuit  peccare.     The  ground 
of  his  inability  to  sin  did  not  lie  in  the  immunity,  and 
almost  necessity,  of  a  nature  or  rank,  but  in  the  moral 
entail,  the  moral  reverberation,  of  his  great,  initial,  and 
inclusive  act  eternal  in  the  heavens.     His  renunciations 
on  earth   had   behind  them  all  the  power  of  that  com- 
pendious renunciation  by  which  he  came  to  earth ;  even 
as  his  earthly  acts  of  individual  forgiveness,  before  lie 
came  to  the  universal  forgiveness  of  Calvary,  had  behind 
them  that  cross  which  he  took  up  when  the  Lamb  was  slain 
before  the  foundation  of  the  world.     His  relation  to  God 
was  immediate  from  the  first,  and  perfect;  but  that  did 
not  give  him  any  immunity  from  the  moral  law  that  we 
must  earn  our  greatest  legacies,  and  appropriate  by  toil 
and  conflict  our  best  gifts.     We  have  to  serve  ourselves, 
heirs  to  the  greatness  of  our  fathers.     Non  potuit  peccare, 
nevertheless.     The     intimacy    of     his    connection    with 
Humanity  was  in  that  respect  but  qualified.  Yet  to  his  own 
experience  the  moral  conflict  was  entirely  real,  because 
his  self-emptying  included  an  oblivion  of  that  impossibility 
of  sin.     As  consciousness  arose  he 'was  unwittingly  pro- 


342  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

tected  from  those  deflections  incident  to  inexperience 
which  would  have  damaged  his  moral  judgment  and 
development  when  maturity  came.  And  this  was  only 
possible  if  he  had,  to  begin  with,  a  unique,  central,  and 
powerful  relation  to  the  being  of  God  apart  from  his  own 
earthly  decisions.  So  that  his  growth  was  growth  in 
what  he  was,  and  not  simply  to  what  he  might  be.  It  was 
not  acquiring  what  he  had  not,  but  appropriating  and 
realising  what  he  had.  It  was  coming  to  his  own  unique 
self.  I  have  already  said  that  I  am  alive  to  the  criticism 
to  which  such  a  position  has  been  exposed,  in  that  it 
seems  to  take  him  out  of  a  real  moral  conflict  like  our 
own.  And  the  answer,  you  have  noted,  is  three-fold. 
First,  that  our  Redeemer  must  save  us  by  his  difference 
from  us,  however  the  salvation  get  home  by  his  parity 
with  us.  He  saves  because  he  is  God  and  not  man. 
Second,  the  reality  of  his  conflict  is  secured  by  his 
kenotic  ignorance  of  his  inability  to  sin.  And  third,  his 
unique  relation  to  God  was  a  relation  to  a  free  God  and 
not  to  a  mechanical  or  physical  fate,  or  to  an  invincible 
bias  to  good. 

§         §         § 
The  second  movement  is  God's  movement  to  man. 

In  this  connection  we  note,  first,  that  God  by  his 
nature  does  so  move. 

He  is  no  Deistic  God.  His  changeless  nature  is  not 
stock-stiff  and  apart.  It  has  an  absolute  mobility.  It 
has  in  it  the  power  and  secret  of  all  change,  all  out-going, 
without  going  out  of  Himself.  It  is  part  of  his  self- 
assertion  as  the  absolute  God  that  he  should  determine 
Himself  into  communicating  Himself.  He  moves,  he  was 
not  moved,  to  give  Himself  in  revelation  to  man.  But 
was  man,  then,  eternal  in  God,  if  in  His  gift  to  man  He 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self -Fulfilment  of  Christ      343 

do  not  go  out  of  Himself  in  this  act  ?  That  cannot  be ; 
for  man  is  His  creature  and  the  creature  is  not  eternal. 
But  He  went  out  always  to  His  increate  Son,  in  whom 
and  through  whom  all  creation  is  and  all  Humanity  ;  in 
and  through  whom  alone  we  have  the  revelation  and 
actual  gift  of  Himself  ;  who  was  coming,  and  not  merely 
prophesied,  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  in  a  less  degree 
in  other  faiths. 

Second,  He  moves  to  save. 

The  coming  of  Christ  in  the  long  course  of  history  is 
the  coming  of  God  the  Redeemer.  Man's  hunger  for 
deliverance  is  the  greatest  movement  in  all  the  soul's  life 
except  one — God's  passion  to  save,  and  his  ceaseless 
action  in  saving.  It  is  here  alone  that  we  grasp  God's 
real  presence  and  rest  on  it  for  ever.  Valuable  as 
speculative  versions  of  the  Incarnation  may  be,  we  only 
really  have  it  and  believe  in  it  when  we  sit  inside  it,  by 
the  saving  action  which  sets  us  in  Christ,  and  assures  us 
of  the  incredible  fact  that  we  are  included  by  God's 
strange  grace  in  the  same  love  wherewith  he  loves  his 
only  begotten  Son.  We  are  sure  of  the  Incarnation  only 
as  those  who  taste  the  benefit  of  Christ's  death  in  union 
with  him. 

§  §  § 
What  we  have  in  Christ,  therefore,  is  more  than  the 
co-existence  of  two  natures,  or  even  their  interpene- 
tration.  We  have  within  this  single  increate  person  the 
mutual  involution  of  the  two  personal  acts  or  movements 
supreme  in  spiritual  being,  the  one  distinctive  of  man, 
the" other  distinctive  of  God;  the  one  actively  productive 
from  the  side  of  Eternal  God,  the  other  actively  receptive 
from  the  side  of  growing  man  ;  the  one  being  the  pointing, 
in  a  corporeal  person,  of  God's  long  action  in  entering 


344  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

history,  the  other  the  pointing  of  man's  moral  growth  in 
the  growing  appropriation  by  Jesus  of  his  divine  content 
as  he  becomes  a  fuller  organ  for  God's  full  action  on 
man.  The  two  supreme  movements  of  spiritual  being, 
redemption  and  religion,  are  revealed  as  being  so  personal 
that  they  can  take  harmonious,  complete,  and  final  effect 
within  one  historic  person,  increate  but  corporeal. 

We  seem,  viewing  it  in  this  light,  to  have  something 
that  comes  nearer  to  our  experience,  something  we  can 
verify,  and  something,  therefore,  that  is  of  more  religious 
value  to  us,  than  if  we  speak  too  much  about  a  con- 
junction of  natures.  That  is  not  within  our  experience; 
and  therein  it  shares  with  such  theories  as  a  metaphysical 
Trinity,  or  the  adjustment  of  mercy  and  justice  in  God, 
a  certain  spiritual  impotence  as  it  works  to  its  results. 

§         §         § 
When  we  set  to  consider  the  nature  of  God's  union 

with  man  in  Christ  we  must  give  proper  effect  to  each 
side.  In  the  first  place  nothing  must  be  done  to  imperil 
the  absoluteness,  the  freedom,  of  God,  His  creative 
initiative  on  grounds  entirely  within  Himself.  Accord- 
ingly, the  union  in  a  corporeal  Christ  can  only  be  an 
exalted  form  of  God's  relation  to  those  finite  con- 
ditions which  underlay  the  existence  of  a  created  world, 
and  made  it  at  the  same  time  a  finished  world.  That  is 
to  say,  it  was  a  relation  that  had  its  roots  in  Eternity,  a 
relation  within  the  absolute  God,  an  immanence  of  the 
world  in  the  Transcendent,  of  the  corporeal  personality 
in  the  spiritual. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  nothing  must  be  done  to 
impair  the  reality  of  human  life,  the  conditions  of  its 
finitude,  the  necessity  of  growth  within  the  course  of 
time.     It  does  not  begin  as  a  finished  article.     It  begins 


xii.J       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self- Fulfilment  oj  Christ      345 

with  certain  possibilities,  with  a  destiny  engrained  in 
the  protoplast ;  but  it  only  passes  from  a  destiny  into  a 
perfection  through  a  career. 

But,  having  given  due  effect  to  each  side,  how  can 
we  have  those  apparent  contradictions  united  in  one 
historic  personality — absolute  God  and  relative  man, 
absolute  finality  and  growing  attainment,  absolute  Grace 
and  growth  in  Grace,  the  victory  won  and  yet  the  victory 
to  be  won,  the  Kingdom  come  and  the  Kingdom  coming  ? 
How  are  we  to  adjust  the  contradiction  between  the 
absolute  and  the  evolutionary  in  this  concrete  and  crucial 
case  ?  On  the  threshold  of  such  inquiry  let  me  remind 
you  once  more  that  it  is  only  in  the  alogical  unity  of  a 
person  for  whose  action  and  growth  they  are  necessary 
that  we  find  the  harmony  of  several  antinomies  that  defy 
rational  adjustment. 

§  §  § 
We  may  take  a  step  by  remembering  the  form  in  which 
the  union  is  expressed.  It  is  not  in  a  monumental  person 
but  in  an  active,  not  in  a  quiescent  personality,  statuesque 
and  ideal,  but  in  one  who  exists  in  a  vast  movement  and 
is  consummated  in  a  crucial  act.  The  union  means  that 
this  act  or  movement  is  twofold.  In  a  sense,  but  in 
no  monistic  sense,  we  have  one  nature,  in  two  modes  of 
action;  for  moral  reality  must  be  in  heaven  what  it  is  on 
earth.  It  is  a  polar  movement,  the  reconciliation  of 
two  directions,  two  tendencies,  and  not  the  fusion  of 
two  quantities,  and  certainly  not  of  two  forces.  It 
is  wills  that  are  concerned  ;  and  wills  are  not  forces  so 
much  as  elective  and  directive  powers  over  forces.  If 
will  be  a  force,  it  is  a  force  that  differs  from  all 
others  in  choosing  them,  aiming  them,  coordinating, 
and  concentrating   them.     It    lays  the  guns,  so  to  say. 


346  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesiis  Christ         [lect. 

As  the  union  of  wills  we  have  in  Christ,  therefore,  the 
union  of  two  moral  movements  or  directions,  and  not 
merely  of  two  forces  or  things;  and  we  have  their  reconcilia- 
tion and  not  merely  their  confluence,  their  mutual  living 
involution  and  not  simply  their  inert  conjunction.  Much 
that  may  seem  obscure  would  vanish  if  we  could  but 
cease  to  think  in  terms  of  material  substance  or  force, 
however  fine,  and  learn  to  think  in  terms  of  personal 
subjects  and  their  kind  of  union ;  if  our  minds  gave  up 
handling  quantities  in  these  high  matters  and  took  up 
kinds.  It  is  the  long  and  engrained  habit  of  thinking  in 
masses  or  entities  that  makes  so  unfamiliar  and  dark  the 
higher  habit  of  thinking  in  acts. 

§         §         § 
And  the  next  step  we  take  is  to  note  that  it  is  a  union 

whose  object  is  above  all  religious.  It  is  not  to  provide 
us  with  a  scheme  of  things,  or  a  ground  of  ethic.  It  is  to 
save.  It  is  to  restore.  It  is  to  restore  the  soul's  com- 
munion with  God.  It  is  to  regain  true  religion  by  a  new 
birth.  The  nature  of  the  union  must  be  given  us  by  the 
nature  of  the  purpose  to  be  served  and  the  work  to  be 
done.  The  canon  for  the  Incarnation,  I  have  said,  is 
soteriological.  It  is  the  work  of  Christ  that  gives  us  the 
key  to  the  nature  of  Christ.  It  is  the  experience  of  faith 
in  his  work  that  alone  opens  to  us  the  person  and  the 
deity  of  Christ  as  the  creator  of  the  new  life  with  God. 
And  difference  of  experience  here,  the  difference  between 
saving  and  sympathetic  faith,  covers  a  difference  in  the 
type  of  religion,  which  a  few  generations  always  reveal  as 
really  another  religion.  What  we  have  to  ask  about 
Christ  then,  is  this,  what  account  of  him  is  demanded  by 
that  work,  that  new  creation  of  us,  that  real  bringing  of 
us  to  God,  not  simply  in  nearness  but  in  likeness  ?     We 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self -Fulfilment  of  Christ      347 

are  to  think  about  Christ  whatever  is  required  to 
explain  the  most  certain  thing  in  the  soul's  experience — 
namely,  that  he  has  given  it  the  new  life  of  God  and 
mercy,  and  saved  it  from  the  old  life  of  guilt,  self,  and 
the  world.  We  ask  what  is  required  in  one  who  not  only 
opens  communications  but  restores  to  such  as  we  are  real 
and  complete  communion  with  God,  one  who  does  not 
pass  us  on  but  keeps  us  in  himself,  to  keep  us  in  God  ? 
What  is  required  in  one  who  is  himself  our  reconciliation 
and  our  holiness  before  God  ;  one  who  is  God's  holiness 
in  human  form ;  who  unites  the  receptivity  which  is 
religion  with  the  creativeness  which  is  revelation ;  in 
whom  revelation  and  religion  are  completely  one  on  the 
whole  historic  scale  ?  The  union  of  God  and  man  in 
Christ  was  of  the  nature  required  by  that  saving  work, 
and  not  by  the  idea  of  a  paragon  Godman.  It  is  the 
union  in  one  kenotic  person  of  God's  distinctive  action 
and  man's.  We  have  God  as  a  Trinity,  i.e.  as  a  personal 
God  who,  without  going  out  of  Himself,  can  move, 
love,  communicate,  in  a  perfectly  spontaneous  way,  with- 
out being  moved  by  any  power  outside,  who  has  in  His 
holy  self  both  the  ground  and  object  of  his  outgoing  love. 
And  we  have  man  as  a  person,  but  as  a  creaturely  person, 
with  a  twofold  disposition — first,  to  receive  rather  than  to 
create,  and  second  by  this  receptivity  to  grow  as  a  person, 
from  the  living  soul  in  which  he  begins,  to  its  own  latent 
quality  and  destiny.     Is  it   quite  impossible*  to  unite  in 

*  Here  let  us  once  more  remember  that,  when  we  speak  of  the  possible 
or  impossible,  we  arc  not  appealing  to  the  licence  of  a  psychology  merely 
scientific  or  phenomenal,  but  to  a  sympathetic  and  spiritual  psychology  ; 
to  a  psychology  which  comes  not  by  the  detached  observation  of 
religion  as  a  historic  fact,  but  either  experiences  religion  in  that  per- 
sonal and  mystic  feature  which  makes  it  faith,  or  at  least  pursues  with 
sympathetic  imagination  the  spiritual  process  of  those  who  are  the  classics 
of  tne  evangelical  exjierience  as  the  summit  of  religion.  Troeltsch  is 
perhaps  the  greatest  of  f»ur  authorities  on  the  psychology  of  religion  ; 
and  he  has  done  valuable  service  in  the  stand  he  has  made  on  this  point. 


348  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jestis  Christ         [lect. 

one  person — not  omnipotence  and  feebleness;  that  is 
impossible — but  the  absolute  outgoing  love  of  God  and 
the  perfect  but  growing  reception  of  it  by  man  ?  Is  it 
impossible  to  have,  in  one  saving  man,  perfect  revelation 
and  perfect  religion  perfectly  interpenetrating  ?  Is  it 
impossible  to  have,  in  one  mighty  person,  salvation 
already  guaranteed  and  salvation  in  course  of  being 
wrought  ?  Did  he  not  himstlf  preach  of  a  kingdom  that 
was  coming  because  it  was  come  ?  Is  it  impossible  to 
have  in  that  person's  very  constitution  a  salvation  which 
is  only  worked  out  by  his  own  appropriation  of  the  deep 
content  of  his  own  saving  soul  ?  His  was  a  soul  framed 
for  saving,  so  to  say,  as  the  others  were  framed  for  being 
saved  ;  and  when  he  came  to  himself  it  was  to  a  Saviour, 
he  came,  as  we  come  to  ourselves  as  his  saints.  His 
growth  in  grace  was  the  history  of  the  world's  moral 
crisis,  it  was,  in  the  same  act,  the  growth  of  our  salva- 
tion ;  for  the  atoning  cross  was  the  principle  and  the 
achievement  of  his  whole  moral  life.  But  it  was  the 
working  out  of  a  salvation  which  was  already  there,  in 
virtue  of  the  great  renunciation  whereby  the  Creator  of 
souls  came  in  fashion  as  a  soul  he  made.  In  a  sense,  we 
were  saved  by  Christ  before  he  was  born  ;  and  he  was 
born  because  we  were  thus  saved.  Could  the  agent  of 
creation  in  Godhead  not  appear  among  the  persons  he 
created  ?  Could  the  Creator  Son  not  become  a  creaturely 
soul,  however  increate  ? 

§  §  § 
What  we  have,  then,  is  this.  The  union  of  God  and 
man  in  Christ  is  so  far  like  the  Creation.  On  the  one 
side  it  is  a  finished  work  of  God,  on  the  other  it  is  a 
progressive  work  of  man.  It  is  a  finished  work  of  God 
in  so  far  as  this;  the  exceptional,  the  increate  person 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self- Fulfilment  of  Christ       349 

of  the    historic    Jesus,  as    the    kenotic    incarnation    of 
the  eternal    Son  by  his  own  act  and   movement,   con- 
tained the  Godhead  in    its  whole  fulness  of  holy  love. 
So  that  that  person  by  his  holy  constitution,  whether 
he    knew    it    at    every    moment    or     not,     guaranteed 
the    perfect    consummation    of    salvation    in   the    ever 
perfect  sinlessness  of  the  Saviour.     But  the  union  has 
another    side — the   appropriative   ascent    and    the   pro- 
gressive  deepening  of   the    man    Jesus    in    this   sinless 
life   and    holy   work ;    his   enlarging  sense  of  the  work 
to  be  done,  his  rising  sense  of  the  power  to  do  it,  and 
his   expanding    sanctity    in    the   doing   of  it.     We  may 
speak  of  a  progressive  incarnation  within  his  life,  if  we 
give  it  a  kenotic  basis.     He  grew  in  the  grace  in  which 
he  always  was,  and  in    the  knowledge   of  it.      As  his 
personal  history  enlarged  and  ripened  by  every  experi- 
ence, and  as  he  was  always  found  equal  to  each  moral 
crisis,    the   latent    Godhead    became    more    and    more 
mighty  as  his  life's  interior,  and  asserted  itself  with  the 
more  power  as  the  personality  grew  in  depth  and  scope. 
Every   step   he   victoriously    took    into    the    dark   and 
hostile  land   was   an    ascending    movement  also  of  the 
Godhead  which  was  his   base.     This   ascent  into   Hell 
went  on,  from  His  temptation  to  His  tomb,  in  gathering 
power.     Alongside  his  growing  humiliation  to  the  con- 
ditions of  evil   moved   his  growing   exaltation    to    holy 
power.     Alongside  the  Kenosis  and  its  negations  there 
went    a     corresponding    Plerosis,    without    which    the 
Kenosis  is  a  one-sided   idea.     Er  starb  und  wurde.     The 
more  he  laid  down  his  personal  life  the  more  he  gained 
his  divine  soul.     Thr;  more  his  divine  soul  renounced  his 
immunities  the  more  he  acquired  of  glory.     The  more  he 
discarded    his    privilege   the  more   he   appropriated    his 


350  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jeans  Christ         [lect. 

dignity.  The  less  he  thought  of  prerogative  the  more  he 
grew  in  power.  More  and  more,  as  he  laid  by  what  he 
eternally  was,  he  came  to  be  what  he  began  by  being. 
The  eternal  son  learned  by  suffering  the  sonship  he 
had  never  forgotten.  And  this  was  the  positive  process 
of  the  long  act  of  our  salvation.  Our  redemption  was 
the  achieving  also  of  his  old  incarnation.  The  growing 
involution  of  those  two  movements  of  descent  and  ascent 
was  the  procession  also  of  the  reconciliation  of  God  and 
the  world.  Then  the  consummation  came,  and  it  was 
all  secured  where  it  could  never  be  undone.  But  it  must 
be  for  ever  unfolded  for  what  it  is,  and  not  to  what  it 
might  be  made  to  become. 

Thus  the  sinless  growth  of  Christ's  character  is  in  the 
very  act  growth  also  of  his  objective  achievement  for  us. 
It  is  the  moral  process  of  man's  salvation,  and  the  gradual 
act  of  God.  Christ's  perfect  progress  to  perfection,  his 
finished  style  of  achieving  his  finished  work,  is  only 
the  obverse  and  detail  of  God's  act  of  our  redemption, 
already  absolute  in  His  holy  love  and  His  holy  Son.  His 
self-sanctification  was  ours  also.  Christ  worked  out 
the  Salvation  he  was.  It  was  only  in  history  and  its 
conditions  that  he  could  realise  all  that  was  superhistoric 
within  him.  He  was  exercised  unto  the  godliness  he 
brought  with  him.  The  deepening  of  his  faithfulness 
was  the  emergence  of  his  deity.  He  was  not  acquiring 
deity,  he  was  unfolding  it.  And  in  his  lowest  limits  his 
divinest  mastery  shows. 

§         §         § 
When  we  are  asked,  then,  what  we  mean  by  the  God- 
head   of   Christ   we    may   begin  by    disowning    certain 
things  which  we  do  not  mean.     We  do  not  mean  that 
the  whole  Godhead  and  its  omnipotence  was  packed,  as 


XII.]      The  Plerosis  or  the  Self-Fulfilment  of  Christ       351 

it  were,  into  conditions  of  space  and  time  in  that  historic 
person  (though  the  whole  Godhead  was  involved  in  him 
and  his  work).  We  do  not  mean  that  **  the  baby  Jesus 
was  the  Lord  of  Hosts,"  except  in  some  sense  that  would 
take  much  explaining.  We  do  not  mean  that  Jesus 
himself  ever  so  felt.  Nor  need  we  mean  that  at  ever)' 
moment  of  his  life  he  had  an  equal  sense  of  what  he 
was.  Nor  do  we  even  mean  that  at  any  moment  of  his 
humiliation  he  necessarily  had  the  full  sense  of  all  he 
was.  But  we  do  mean  that  as  the  Eternal  Son  he  was 
the  complete  and  final  action  of  the  holy  and  gracious 
love  of  God  our  Saviour ;  that  his  holy  Humanity  went 
up  always  as  an  absolute  satisfaction  and  joy  "to  God  ; 
that  God  saw  in  him  the  travail  of  His  Own  Soul  and 
was  satisfied ;  that  in  Christ's  historic  person  God 
offered  himself  in  his  saving  fulness  to  and  for  mankind 
with  the  omnipotence  required  for  his  saving  work. 

§  §  § 
And  when  we  are  asked  what  we  mean  by  the  manhood 
of  such  a  Christ,  we  do  not  mean  some  stalwart  dignity 
with  which  he  faced  and  owned  God  in  self-respecting 
godliness.  The  "manliness  of  Christ,"  like  his  "  bravery," 
is  an  unpleasant  phrase.  Nor  do  we  mean  an  elemental 
force  and  passion  which  linked  the  natural  side  of  his 
personality  to  the  world  with  the  fervour  of  a  Titan's 
blood — as  if  but  for  the  grace  of  God  he  could  have  been 
an  antedated  Mirabeau.  We  mean  much  more  than  his 
intimate  and  sympathetic  humanness.  For  the  essence 
of  Humanity  is  conscience.  It  is  man's  moral  relation  to 
a  holy  God.  And  Christ's  manhood,  therefore,  consists 
in  the  moral  reality  of  his  experience,  his  conflict,  and  his 
growth.  It  means  his  true  ethical  personality  growing  in 
an  actual  historic  situation.     It  means  that  he  counted  in 


352  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

the  public  of  his  age,  and  really  inhabited  its  spiritual 
milieu.  It  means  that  he  filled  a  mighty  place  in  the 
social  situation  of  his  land  and  time,  and  that  the 
immediate  reference  of  all  he  said  and  did  was  to  that 
situation,  however  vast,  and  even  infinite,  the  total 
horizon  was,  the  total  bearing  of  his  action  or  speech. 
And  above  all  it  means  that  his  action  arose  ethically 
out  of  what  he  was,  that  his  carriage  expressed  his 
soul,  that  his  vocation  rested  on  his  position,  that  his 
receptivity  is  the  greatest  human  activity,  that  he  was, 
first  and  foremost,  the  ever  receptive  Son  of  the 
holy  Father,  and  that  he  only  did  the  things  which 
were  shown  him  of  God.  His  manhood  was  in  his 
perfectly  active  receptivity.  His  subordination  was  no 
inferiority.  His  obedience  was  his  divinest  achievement. 
And  out  of  that  obedience  grew  his  vast  creative,  com- 
manding, and  even  coercive,  effect  upon  the  world.  His 
kingly  rule  is  but  the  upper  side  of  his  filial  sacrifice,  of 
the  obedience  which  put  him  by  man's  side  while  he  was 
on  God's.  His  human  person  was  not  the  most 
illustrious  of  the  many  spiritual  and  providential 
personalities  that  had  appeared  on  earth  from  God.  It 
was  in  its  nature  exceptional  and  miraculous.  It  was  a 
new  departure — more  above  other  men  than  the  first 
man  was  above  the  nature  from  which  he  rose  ;  yet  as 
truly  of  man  as  man  is  of  nature.  He  was  all  men's 
creator  in  a  true  man's  life.  And  his  identity  with 
Humanity  lies  not  in  prolonging,  as  it  were,  to  the  sky 
the  rarest  matter  of  the  race,  but  in  his  own  voluntary 
act  of  self-identification  with  it.  His  identity  with  man 
lay  in  no  mere  continuity  of  substance,  nor  even  in 
participating  in  personality,  but  in  his  assumption  of 
man's  conditions  of  personality,  and  his  renunciation  of 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  Self -Fulfilment  of  Christ      353 

God's.  It  lay  in  his  active  acceptance  of  the  human 
and  sin-laden  conditions  of  communion  with  God  in  such 
victorious  and  sinless  way  as  to  make  that  communion 
possible  and  real  for  every  other  personal  soul.  And 
amid  all  that  we  recognise  in  him  of  human  conditions 
and  human  growth,  even  his  growth  in  the  consciousness 
of  what  he  was,  we  shall  be  most  careful  to  note  that  any 
growth  in  his  sense  of  his  Godhead  was  not  the  growth 
or  acquisition  of  that  Godhead  itself. 

What  man  has  in  common  with  God,  altogether,  is 
not  the  kind  of  identity  which  is  claimed  in  various 
theories  of  continuity  and  immanence.  The  immanence 
of  God  is  indeed  the  true  unity  of  Creation ;  but  it  is  not 
the  principle  of  the  communion  of  God  and  man.  It  is 
too  little  ethical  for  that.  Man's  identity  with  God  is 
formally,  personality  ;  and,  materially,  it  is  a  mutual 
spiritual  act  possible  only  to  persons.  It  consists  in  the 
personal  nature,  and  especially  the  personal  action,  which 
alone  make  communion  possible.  So  much  of  parity 
there  is,  else  communion  were  impossible.  On  each  side 
is  a  spiritual  person.  But  in  the  case  of  Christ,  and  in 
view  of  his  work  to  restore  communion,  the  personality 
was  no  created  gift,  but  the  Creator  himself  in  a  bodily 
eclipse  instead  of  heavenly  glory.  The  soul's  Redeemer 
was  the  soul's  Creator,  divested  of  everything  but  the 
holy  love  in  which  he  created,  and  raised  by  the  deep 
and  long  renunciation  to  a  power  in  which  lies  the 
salvation  for  ever  and  ever  of  the  whole  created  race  and 
world.  Man  is  indeed  incomparable  with  God,  but 
incompatible  he  is  not.  And  in  Christ  the  compatibility 
becomes  full  communion.  In  Christ  the  living  God  is, 
to  the  extent  he  lives,  the  giving  God.  In  Christ  we 
were  neither  made   nor  saved   to  eke  out  some  lack  in 


354  ^^^  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

God,  nor  to  meet  some  hunger  in  his  being ;  but  of  his 
fulness  have  we  all  received.  And  we  are  here  as  the 
fulness  and  overflow  of  his  creative  love,  to  his  praise 
and  glory  in  our  faith's  receptive  and  sympathetic  love. 

God  in  Christ  is  the  maker  of  his  own  revelation.  It 
was  God  himself  that  came  to  us  in  Christ ;  it  was 
nothing  about  God,  even  about  his  eternal  essence  or 
his  excellent  glory.  It  is  God  that  is  our  salvation,  and 
not  the  truth  about  God.  And  what  Christ  came  to  do 
was  not  to  convince  us  even  that  God  is  love,  but  to  be 
with  us  and  in  us  as  the  loving  God  forever  and  ever. 
He  came  not  to  preach  the  living  God  but  to  be  God  our 
life ;  yes,  not  to  preach  even  the  loving  God  but  to  be  the 
love  that  God  forever  is. 

In  Mr.  Glover's  fine  book  recently  published  on  The 
Conflict  of  Religions  within  the  Roman  Empire  (Methuen, 
7s.  6d.)  he  has  naturally  much  to  say  on  the  historic 
figure  and  effect  of  Jesus  Christ — so  much  that  it  involves 
more  beyond  concerning  his  person  that  he  does  not  say. 
Mr.  Glover  gathers  up  his  belief  about  Jesus  in  the 
following  compressed  sentence.  "  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
does  stand  in  the  centre  of  human  history;  he  has 
brought  God  and  man  into  a  new  relation ;  and  he  is  the 
personal  concern  of  every  one  of  us."  That  is  really  a 
tremendous  thing  to  be  able  to  say,  as  the  conclusion  of 
a  true  historian.  It  has  the  note  if  not  the  fulness  of 
the  true  Christian  faith.  And  it  offers  a  welcome  contrast 
to  much  of  the  religiosity  of  slashing  litterateurs  who 
are  iconoclasts  destitute  of  the  historic  sense,  as  well  as 
of  moral  delicacy,  and  the  inward  light,  and  whose  moral 
ideal  is  not  the  loyal  but  the  rebel.  But  it  is  a  conclusion 
that  carries  us  farther  than  the  writer  goes,  farther,  of 
course,  than  he  may  say  he  was  entitled  to  go  by  the 


XII.]       The  Plerosis  or  the  SelJ-Fulfiltnent  of  Christ      355 

scope  and  compass  of  his  book.  At  any  rate  it  carries 
the  mind  into  a  region  which  we  may  call  metaphysic  or 
not  but  which  is  certainly  metempyric,  and  compels 
conclusions  much  beyond  those  of  moral  aesthetic  or 
religious  impressionism.  It  may  be  quite  true  that 
Christianity  was  early  captured  by  Greek  and  other 
metaphysics,  and  that  their  bond  remains  upon  Christian 
thought  to  this  day.  It  may  be  that  some  who  take  a 
position  as  decided  as  Mr.  Glover's  towards  Christ  as 
"  One  who  brought  God  and  man  into  a  new  relation, 
and  who  is  the  personal  concern  of  each  one  of  us,"  are 
yet  unable  to  use  with  entire  heartiness  the  language 
of  the  current  creeds  about  the  conditions  in  Christ's 
person  which  underlie  such  a  function  and  place.  But 
what  is  the  real  explanation  of  that  capture  of  Chris- 
tianity by  the  metaphysic  of  the  early  centuries  ?  Is  it 
not  here,  that  the  work  of  Christ,  the  position  of  Christ 
— his  work  and  place  as  Mr.  Glover  states  it,  his 
redeeming,  reconciling  work  as  the  early  Church  ex- 
perienced it— that  these  are  not  intelligible  to  faith's  own 
tliought  without  some  metaphysic.  A  metaphysic  of 
some  kind  is  bound  up  with  a  Christ  of  this  kind. 
Without  some  metaphysic  you  have  not  a  base  for  that 
mystic  adoration  of  Christ  which  is  so  much  more  than 
divine  ethic,  and  which  a  whole  class  of  churches  has 
lost.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  in  one  who  changed 
the  whole  relation  between  the  race  and  God  without  a 
metaphysic  of  the  relation  between  that  one  and  God. 
It  is  impossible  to  think  of  Christ  as  the  personal  concern 
of  every  person  without  a  relation  between  his  person 
and  every  other  which  it  is  not  an  absurdity  to  conceive 
in  the  theological  way  which  makes  Christ  the  agent  of 
their  creation.     Such  a  relation  between  Christ  and  other 


356  The  Person  and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ         [lect. 

men  carries  us,  as  soon  as  we  reflect  and  ask  about  it,  into 
a  Christ  supra-historic,  supra-human,  and  premundane. 
Some  metaphysic  of  personality  is  inevitable— except  to 
such  minds  as  have  a  native  nescience,  a  positive  endow- 
ment as  negative  poles  in  all  that  region.  Only  it  must 
not  be  a  metaphysic  of  mere  thought,  brought  up  to  faith 
and  imposed  on  it — injected  as  it  were  into  its  tissue 
as  a  preservative  which  hardens  it,  or,  if  not  hardening 
it,  then  soaking  it  in  an  inspissated  gloom.  It  must  be 
a  metaphysic  of  faith  itself.  It  must  be  some  form  of  the 
post-kantian  metaphysic  of  ethic  ;  a  metaphysic  of  the 
ethic  which  culminates  in  God's  supreme  moral  act  of 
redemption  and  in  man's  supreme  moral  act  of  faith. 
It  is  on  such  lines  that  a  modern  Christology  must 
be  shaped — slowly  as  the  rebuilding  may  come.  A  faith  in 
metaphysic  is  one  thing,  and  the  metaphysic  of  faith  is 
another.  The  former  dominated  too  much  the  theology 
and  the  religion  of  the  past ;  to  the  latter  belongs  the 
future.  It  belongs  to  the  metaphysic  which  is  demanded 
by  the  psychology  of  the  distinctive  experience  of  faith. 
It  is  only  the  Christ  of  the  reconciled  conscience  that 
promises  us  a  Messiah  of  the  intelligible  world.  It  is  only 
the  Christ  of  the  New  Creation  that  can  be  the  Christ  of 
a  complete  Weltanschauung,  and  wear  the  crown  of  a  new 
world  wherein  dwelleth  the  righteousness  of  a  holy  God. 

§  §  § 
I  hope,  in  these  too  compressed  and  tense  but  not 
unmeaning  words  of  mine,  that  the  Lord  in  some 
measure  has  been  transfigured  before  us.  I  hope  the 
atmosphere  has  been  luminous  even  if  every  thought 
is  not  lucid,  and  that  it  has  been  good  to  be  here  even 
if  not  knowing  all  we  said.  The  glory  of  the  Lord 
is  something  more  than  lucid  when  it  breaks  out  upon 


XII.]       The  PUrosis  or  the  Self-Fulfilment  of  Christ       357 

waiting,  watching,  praying,  bemazed  men.  And  there 
is  laid  upon  us,  as  we  go  down  from  the  Mount,  the 
command  of  silence  in  the  form  of  an  incapacity  for 
due  speech.  We  cannot  see  for  the  glory  of  that  light, 
and  what  we  do  see  is  as  yet  beyond  a  man  to  utter. 
Still  I  trust  we  have  felt  some  of  the  depth  of  that 
Glory  which  with  unveiled  faces  we  shall  one  day 
behold,  and  rejoicing  in  it  shall  be  made  like  it.  Let 
us,  as  we  descend,  go  down  with  a  secret  which  we 
cannot  perhaps  expound  but  which  we  cherish,  and  smile 
to  each  other  like  silent  lovers  in  a  crowd,  and  thus  in  a 
true  Church  of  faith-adepts  overcome  the  world.  Let 
us  go  down  to  know  that  there  is  nothing  in  all  the 
raging  valley — neither  the  devilry  of  the  world  nor  the 
impotence  of  the  Church — that  can  destroy  our  con- 
fidence, quench  our  power,  or  derange  our  peace.  Let 
us  go  down  to  know  that  the  meanest  or  the  most 
terrible  things  of  life  now  move  beneath  the  eternal 
mastery  and  triumphant  composure  of  an  almighty 
Saviour  and  a  final  salvation  which  is  assured  in 
heavenly  places  in  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord. 

§  §  § 
And  now  may  he  who  so  emptied  himself  that  he  was 
filled  with  all  the  fulness  of  God  dwell  fully  in  us ;  may 
he  raise,  rule,  and  perfect  us  in  all  holiness;  to  the  end 
that,  bowing  before  him  with  every  knee  both  in  heaven 
and  upon  earth,  and  ever  more  calling  Him  Holy,  Holy, 
Holy  Lord,  we  may  be,  in  Him,  to  the  praise  and  glory 
of  the  Father's  Grace  Who  made  us  acceptable  in  the 
Eternal  S(;n,  world  without  end.     Amen. 

B  B 


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